Bishop from New York to play key role in stop

By BART JONES

SPIRITUAL LEADERS

A centerpiece of the pope’s visit will be a speech to the United Nations on April 18.

MELVILLE, N.Y. — Bishop William Murphy isn’t the host for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States next month, but he will be playing an important role in events in New York and Washington, D.C.

As the diocese prepares for Benedict XVI’s first visit to the United States as pope, Bishop Murphy said in a recent interview that he expects the pontiff to bring messages about Catholic education, parish life and human rights to events including a speech at the United Nations and a Mass at Yankee Stadium.

“He’s an extraordinary human being,” said Bishop Murphy, adding that he has met Benedict XVI briefly four or five times in the nearly three years since he was elected pope. “He’s a very, very kind, he’s a very gentle person.”

Bishop Murphy, 68, a Rome insider who spent years working in the Vatican, joked about how the pope “always compliments me on my Italian. He cannot understand how an American” speaks it so well. “I said, ‘I’ve been here as long as you!”’

The leader of Long Island’s 1.4 million Catholics said he expects to attend most of the pope’s events in both Washington, D.C., and New York due to a combination of factors: He is a bishop, he heads one of the neighboring dioceses the pope will be visiting and he sits on an array of church boards in the United States and Rome.

Bishop Murphy will be among those greeting the pope when he arrives at Kennedy Airport on April 18 for the second part of his trip, and will also help bid him farewell when he departs on April 20. He said 5,000 people are expected to say goodbye in an airport ceremony in which residents of ethnically diverse Brooklyn and Queens will perform songs and dances from their native lands.

Bishop Murphy also will help celebrate a Mass the pope will say at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He said the centerpiece of the pope’s visit is the April 18 speech to the United Nations — something his most immediate predecessors also did.

At the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., the pope may talk about “Catholic identity” in Catholic schools, Bishop Murphy said. Today, “you can go through a Catholic college and never see a Catholic priest or sister,” Bishop Murphy said.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y., has acquired tickets for some of the events, he said, including 1,000 for the Mass at Yankee Stadium. The diocese also has 150 tickets for the Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which will be celebrated only for priests, nuns, brothers and deacons.

Bishop Murphy said Rockville Centre, which distributed all the tickets by lottery, received requests from 17,000 people for the Yankee Stadium Mass. “I’m still getting letters from people saying, ‘Can’t you please find me a ticket?”’

Another highlight will be the pope’s visit to St. Joseph Seminary in Yonkers for a youth event. Bishop Murphy said Rockville Centre will send a group of young people as well as all of its seminarians.

The diocese’s cable television station, Telecare, will broadcast all of the pope’s events.

Bishop Murphy said he initially crossed paths with Benedict XVI in the 1980s when both worked in Rome and the pope was known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. “We knew each other. We exchanged Christmas cards, but I couldn’t say that I really knew him,” Murphy said.

He added that he has come to know him better since he became pope.

He noted that the pope, who will celebrate his 81st birthday during the trip, is a scholar and was “never the athlete outdoorsman of John Paul II.”

Bishop Murphy, while younger than Benedict XVI, has been suffering his own health problems. He underwent surgery in November to repair two discs in his back, and still undergoes physical therapy.