WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (UPI) — As the United States prepares to receive Pope Francis for his first visit to America Tuesday, we look back at previous papal visits to the country.
Francis, who is scheduled to appear in Washington D.C., Philadelphia and New York will be the third pope to visit the U.S. and The White House. His predecesor, Pope Benedict XVI was the second Bishop of Rome to tour the Executive Mansion in 2008 and Pope Jean Paul II became the first pontiff to visit the White House in October 1979.
In 2008, during his first and only visit to the U.S., Pope Benedict XVI, held mass at St. Patricks Cathedral and at Yankee Stadium, and spent time at Ground Zero and the United Nations in New York.
Benedict was greeted by adoring fans while in the Big Apple following his tour of the U.S. capital where he meet with President Bush and held an outdoor mass at the National Stadium.
Pope Jean Paul II, who journeyed to the U.S. a total of seven times, completed his last tour in January of 1999. During the trip, a two-day stop in St. Louis on his way back from Mexico City, John Paul II met with then-President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton and Vice President Al Gore as well as the Cardinal and Archbishop of St. Louis.
During a prayer service at the Cathedral Basilica, Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan told the pope he would commute the death sentence of Missouri death row inmate Darrell Mease.
At the time of his second trip in 1987, the pope took to the West Coast where he said mass at San Francisco’s Candlestick Parkalso, visited the Golden Gate Bridge and made acquaintances with actor Clint Eastwood.
Jean Paul II first came to the U.S. in 1979. At the time, he met with then-President Jimmy Carter and held a mass at the National Mall.
You can follow UPI’s coverage of Pope Francis’ visit here.
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