When Pope Paul VI became the first pope to visit the United States on Oct. 4, 1965, his "popemobile" was a 20-foot, custom-built Lincoln Continental limousine with a detachable roof so the pontiff could stand and wave to the crowds.It was a one-day visit to New York. Everyone, Catholics included, must have been somewhat mystified by the smiling man in white, rising from his shiny black limo.
Until that day, popes were distant figures who made pronouncements but were not seen in the flesh.
Paul VI, the first pope to travel the world, acknowledged how fast change was coming. As a result of advances in communications, he said at the United Nations, "the world has become much smaller."
Forty-two years later, as Pope Benedict XVI prepares to make the ninth papal visit to the U.S., the world is far smaller than Paul VI could have imagined. Benedict's every move and word in Washington, D.C., and New York will not only be seen and heard around the globe, but will be broken down, analyzed, debated and categorized in nearly real time.
Paul VI's visit to New York represented a break from the Roman Catholic Church's incredibly long European-centered past and a greeting to the new global village (author Marshall McLuhan had coined the term just three years before).
The pope visited the U.N. and St. Patrick's Cathedral, met for 46 minutes with President Johnson at the Waldorf-Astoria, and celebrated an evening Mass at Yankee Stadium that was televised commercial-free by all three networks. The New York City Police Department deployed 18,000 of its 26,000 to protect the pope.
When Paul VI bid farewell from Kennedy Airport, America's papal expectations were forever changed. The question to future popes would now be: When are you coming for a visit?
Fortunately John Paul II was a pope who loved to travel.
His epic, 26-year pontificate happened to coincide with the high-speed adolescence and maturing of the Media Age. He also had the kind of charisma that enticed hundreds of thousands of people to wait for hours for the chance to get a glimpse of a white-sleeved wave from the modern popemobile.
He would challenge Americans on many occasions, citing their freedom and wealth, to serve as a moral example for the world.
John Paul's maiden voyage to America came in October 1979, during the first year of his pontificate. The mysterious Polish pope, young and strong, stopped in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Des Moines and Washington, D.C.
On Boston Common, the pope declared: "I greet you, America the beautiful." With the Cold War still raging, he worried about the future at the U.N. "Are children to receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?" he asked.
He concluded his first American journey with a Mass on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., before 1 million people.
John Paul II's second and third U.S. visits were brief ones to the same state: refueling stops in Alaska. He touched down in Anchorage for three hours during a multination swing in 1981. Three years later, he disembarked in Fairbanks long enough to meet with President Reagan.
In September 1987, the traveling pope took his longest American swing. Over nine days, he made stops in Miami, Columbia, S.C., New Orleans, San Antonio, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Monterey, Calif., San Francisco, and Detroit. John Paul met with African-American Catholics, Native Americans, AIDS patients and other groups and was said to have come away with a greater understanding of American diversity and pluralism.
John Paul II's reputation as a great evangelist was cemented during his next visit — to World Youth Day in Denver during August 1993. Many wondered whether teens would come out in large numbers to see the pope. But close to 1 million young people showed up, and many jump-started youth ministries in their home parishes.
Then came the fall of 1995. John Paul II, now regarded as a pope of the ages, not to mention a full-fledged media star, returned to the East Coast — to Newark, N.J., New York City, Brooklyn and Baltimore, the birthplace of Catholicism in the U.S.
Finally, on Jan. 26-27, 1999, John Paul made St. Louis his last American stop. In his final remarks, he said: "America first proclaimed its independence on the basis of self-evident moral truths. America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths, which are the very heart of its historical experience. And so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace the truth — the truth revealed by God."
Eight years later, after 9/11, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Catholic Church's sex-abuse crisis, Pope Benedict XVI will make his first papal to the U.S.
The question many now ask is: What message will he bring?
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