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| Declaration of Independence, by John Trumbull, 1819 |
The schedule is set for the Holy Father’s visit to the United States. Pope Francis will visit both Washington, D.C. and New York City in September, followed by a stop at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.
Pope Francis won't be the
first pontiff to step foot in Philadelphia. Saint John Paul II actually visited
the city twice—once before he was Pope, and once at the beginning of his
pontificate. He was sent to the International Eucharistic Congress there in
1976, and he stopped in the “city of brotherly love” during his pastoral visit
to the United States in 1979.
During his pastoral visit,
John Paul II said Mass at Logan Circle. In his homily,
he named Philadelphia as the city of the Declaration of Independence and the
Liberty Bell. He said:
Your attachment to liberty, to
freedom, is part of your heritage. When the Liberty Bell rang for the first
time in 1776, it was to announce the freedom of your nation, the beginning of
the pursuit of a common destiny independent of any outside coercion. This
principle of freedom is paramount in the political and social order, in
relationships between the government and the people, and between individual and
individual. However, man's life is also lived in another order of reality: in
the order of his relationship to what is objectively true and morally good.
Freedom thus acquires a deeper meaning when it is referred to the human person.
It concerns in the first place the relation of man to himself. Every human
person, endowed with reason, is free when he is the master of his own actions,
when he is capable of choosing that good which is in conformity with reason,
and therefore with his own human dignity.
Our beloved Holy Father reminded Philadelphians of
the gift of their freedom, and what that freedom really means for the human
person. May we be reminded of that again as we prepare for the World Meeting of
Families and Pope Francis’s visit.
Saint John Paul II, Pray for Us!
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