PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
Jason Nark, Regina Medina and John F. Morrison
Philadelphia Daily News
AN ELDERLY woman knelt in the last pew of St. Monica’s Church in South Philly on Sunday, a rosary intertwined in her fingers, while a shaggy-haired teenager in basketball shorts played with his cellphone one pew up —both beneath a pastel-painted ceiling of the afterlife.
Catholics in Philly still struggle with the universal mysteries while grappling with the still-simmering sex-abuse scandal that rocked both the diocese here and the faith around the globe. Adherents expect guidance from Rome in the toughest times — and, so, it’s always a monumental moment when Rome comes to you.
It was announced Sunday that Philadelphia will host Pope Benedict XVI for the 2015 World Meeting of Families, the city’s first papal visit since 1979 when a million people crammed the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to see Pope John Paul II. …
The Pope passed over Philadelphia back in 2008 when he visited Washington D.C., then New York.
“What changed? Two things. The grand-jury report, and the eruption that emerged from it, changed everything,” said Vatican expert Rocco Palmo, who writes the Catholic-themed blog Whispers in the Loggia.
“We’ve been through the toughest period that any American diocese has been through in the last 50 years. It’s the darkest hour the Philadelphia Archdiocese has gone through in 200 years.”
Chaput was handpicked by Pope Benedict XVI to lead Philadelphia through traumatic times, and Palmo said that the papal visit is a “vote of confidence” in the Archbishop’s leadership.
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