Pope Francis, in Philadelphia, Urges Active Role for Laity
PHILADELPHIA — Pope Francis, arriving in Philadelphia on Saturday on the final leg of a visit to the United States, reminded ordinary Catholics of the role they must share with priests and the wider church to sustain the faith “in a rapidly changing society.”
“Each one of us has to respond as best we can,” he said.
Speaking at a Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, he cited Pope Leo XIII’s words to the Philadelphia-born Katharine Drexel — later recognized as a saint — during an 1887 audience: “What about you? What are you going to do?”
Francis said the question should be addressed today to young people and by implication to women, noting it was important that Leo asked the question of a laywoman. “We know that the future of the church calls for a much more active engagement on the part of the laity,” he said
Though he encouraged help from people in the pews, Francis gently warned that there were limits. “This does not mean relinquishing the spiritual authority with which we have been entrusted,” he said. “Rather, it means discerning and employing wisely the manifold gifts which the Spirit pours out upon the church.”
One of Francis’ biggest applause lines during his homily at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on Friday came when he expressed his love and appreciation for nuns. He added to the thought on Saturday, remarking on the “immense contribution which women, lay and religious, have made and continue to make to the life of our communities.”
Francis spoke to bishops, priests and nuns from Pennsylvania at the cathedral, the 151-year-old seat of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, where he arrived by motorcade after flying in from New York. About 2,400 people filled the basilica.
Worshipers included Dr. Tony Coletta, the chief executive of a health care company, who called the pope’s visit “a lifetime opportunity both for the city of Philadelphia and for us.”
“It’s as close to God as we will ever get on the earth,” Dr. Coletta said in the soaring marble-clad nave shortly before the Mass started.
Francis timed his trip to Philadelphia to coincide with the World Meeting of Families, a Vatican-sponsored jamboree that occurs every three years. It was founded in 1994 by Pope John Paul II. This is the first time the meeting has been held in the United States, and organizers said some 18,000 people attended the week’s events.
“During these days of the World Meeting of Families,” the pope said at the Mass, “I would ask you in a particular way to reflect on our ministry to families, to couples preparing for marriage and to our young people.”
Within a week of his return to Rome, the bishops of the church will convene a major meeting, or synod, on the family at the Vatican, and Francis asked his clergy to pray for the deliberations. A major tension lies in how to balance tradition and doctrine with calls for a wider role for women in the church and flexibility on issues such as communion and other sacraments for divorced Catholics who have remarried.
Early in the morning in New York, Francis crammed in final visits at the Vatican mission where he was staying from a small group of priests and nuns and from Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan. The pope arrived at Atlantic Aviation in Philadelphia at 9:45 a.m. on Saturday.
Philadelphia had been preparing for Francis for months. A central part of the city was in a security stranglehold, and many streets were eerily devoid of life. Law enforcement agencies set up 19 checkpoints overnight into Friday to create a secure zone around the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and established seven more at Independence Mall, near the Delaware River. Passers-by were required to go through a magnetometer and have their bags inspected.
Streets were closed and public transit curtailed. Interstate 676, which runs east to west through the heart of the city, was set for closing in both directions, while the Ben Franklin Bridge between Philadelphia and Camden, N.J., was to be closed until noon Monday. And no one could use exits in central Philadelphia from Interstate 95. They closed.
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, called Septa, limited service and required some passengers to buy special Papal Passes in advance. Suburban Station, a major commuter-rail stop in central Philadelphia, was closed for the weekend. Schools, courts and city government offices were shut down for varying time periods starting Wednesday.
Still, many residents in this city of 1.6 million showed the same forbearance that New Yorkers displayed during the pope’s time there from Thursday to Saturday.
“We need this,” said Irene Perry, 59 and a Catholic, who was sitting Friday on her stoop watching people pass through security near the parkway. “We need help. We have homeless, and people without jobs, and I think it’s a beautiful thing that Pope Francis is coming, and he’s going to bless all of us. We need peace in the world.”
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