Pope Benedict XVI drew crowds wherever he went in his “Christ Our Hope” tour in April 2008.
On his first day in New York, he addressed the U.N. General Assembly, urging it to avoid war by “giving attention and encouragement to even the faintest sign of dialogue or desire for reconciliation.” He stopped at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan for Passover greetings and then huddled with more than 250 Christian leaders in a small German Catholic church and recited the Lord’s Prayer with them.
The next day, he celebrated Mass for 3,000 priests, deacons and religious men and women from across the country at St. Patrick’s Cathedral before heading to Yonkers for a youth rally at St. Joseph’s Seminary. Some 25,000 young people “covered the seminary’s grounds and cheered the pope like a rock star when they first saw him in his popemobile,” reporters Gary Stern and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon wrote.
“Friends, again I ask you, what about today?” the pope said to the youngsters. “What are you seeking? What is God whispering to you? The hope which never disappoints is Jesus Christ. The saints show us the selfless love of his way.”
The final day of the pontiff’s tour began at Ground Zero, continued with a Mass for 60,000 at Yankee Stadium and concluded with a sendoff from 4,000 people, including Vice President Dick Cheney, at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The pope said addressing the U.N. General Assembly was a high point and “my visit this morning to Ground Zero will remain firmly etched in my memory, as I continue to pray for those who died and for all who suffer in consequence of the tragedy that occurred there in 2001.”
His 2008 visit was not his first visit to St. Joseph’s Seminary. The future pontiff made a similar visit to Yonkers in 1988, when he was still known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Reach Peter D. Kramer at pkramer@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: When Pope Benedict visited Yonkers NY seminary, Yankee Stadium in 2008