Editor's Report

New Yorkers ‘At Home’ On D.C. Pilgrimage

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Cardinal Dolan called this month’s archdiocesan pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., “the start of something big,” and the full day journey to two national shrines felt like just that.

The number of pilgrims, about 200, was modest, but everyone who traveled on one of four “early” buses from the archdiocese probably came home with their own pilgrimage story.

The cardinal was near the front steps of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and climbed aboard the bus that arrived from Manhattan at noon to welcome New York Catholics to their national church. It’s one with which he is very familiar, having spent time there celebrating Masses, hearing confessions and leading pilgrimage groups when he was a graduate student at The Catholic University of America, whose campus extends from its doors.

“We should all feel at home at this place. It’s the home of our mother,” the cardinal later said during his homily at the Vigil Mass in the shrine’s Crypt Church, concluding the Nov. 15 visit, organized by the Archdiocesan Office of Adult Faith Formation under the direction of Dr. Daniel Frascella.

The cardinal said many parallels exist with his visits home to St. Louis to see his 85-year-old mother, Shirley Dolan, which he planned to do for Thanksgiving. There, he’d be with the person who knows him best, with whom he is most comfortable and who always insists that he stay to enjoy a good meal.

One moment that made the New Yorkers feel “at home” with their shepherd was when he led them on a Rosary walk around the Crypt Church, which started at the tabernacle and continued around the Byzantine-Romanesque-style interior and then on through the shrine’s Lower Level where the pilgrims passed the Papal Exhibit and Hall of American Saints.

They recited the Glorious Mysteries, led by the cardinal, archdiocesan seminarians—more than 30 were present—and Jimmy Mulzet, a parishioner of St. Monica’s in Manhattan.

“I’m really happy and proud to do something like that,” Mulzet said on the bus ride back to the New York Catholic Center. A mailroom employee of the City University of New York for 35 years, Mulzet was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when he was just a baby. Proud to be “totally independent” and living on his own, he said, “My faith in God, that’s what’s helping me.”

The closing Mass was celebrated at an altar with a fascinating history of its own. Known as the Mary Memorial Altar, it was built in 1928 with the contributions of more than 30,000 American women who had “even a remote kinship with the name Mary,” according to a shrine guidebook.

A short bus ride, or a longer walk, down Harewood Road brought many of the pilgrims to the St. John Paul II National Shrine, where Cardinal Dolan became the first U.S. prelate to visit since its dedication last month. The Knights of Columbus, who now operate the new shrine, have mounted an exhibit that one of their communications specialists described to me as “world class.”

He certainly was not exaggerating. “A Gift of Love: The Life of St. John Paul II,” features the major events of the life of the recently canonized pontiff attractively captured in informative, interactive and inspiring fashion. I spent about 45 minutes moving briskly from beginning to end, but you could easily spend two or three times as long.

The exhibit covers the entire span of the pope’s 85-year-life, from heartrending moments as a youngster in Poland to his days as a playwright and actor, and then on to his experiences as a priest, archbishop and pope, including an exploration of the major themes of his 27-year papacy. Interactive audio and video interviews with people who knew him bring a personal perspective to a great world figure.

“You see the real man,” said Ida Bastena, a parishioner of Our Lady of Pity on Staten Island, who called the exhibit “very inspirational.”

A relic of St. John Paul II is available for veneration, and Masses, Holy Hours and confessions are part of the shrine’s weekday schedule. A 500-seat church is planned to open next fall.

The neighborhood around the shrines is also home to many religious orders, as well as the headquarters of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. That presence of so many Catholic Church landmarks has inspired the area’s nickname of “The American Vatican,” Cardinal Dolan told pilgrims.

At the noontime Angelus opening the visit, a warm welcome to the cavernous basilica, the largest Catholic church in the United States, was extended to the New Yorkers by Msgr. Vito Buonanno, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn and a native of the South Bronx who serves as the shrine’s director of pilgrimages. Even with the grandeur of the Upper Church apparent all around the pilgrims, the priest reminded them, “This is a building. The Church is God’s people. We make the purpose of this building real.”

Part of the experience of making a pilgrimage are the inevitable sacrifices that are part of the journey, Msgr. Buonanno said, whether that means getting up early on a Saturday morning to travel more than 200 miles, or enduring delays because of a bus breakdown, as one group of pilgrims did. He told the pilgrims that God had “great graces” in store for them.

During the afternoon, tours of the basilica’s more than 70 chapels and oratories were conducted by seminarians from Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. One of the guides, Ronald Mims, said that he learns “something new every week.”

The basilica had not hosted a pilgrimage from the Archdiocese of New York in “almost 10 years,” said Msgr. Walter Rossi, the shrine’s rector, in remarks during the Vigil Mass. He also noted that a former Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Francis Spellman, had blessed and dedicated the national shrine on Nov. 20, 1959.

Cardinal Dolan, speaking to the pilgrims at the closing Mass, asked them to “help me make this (pilgrimage) a tradition,” adding that he hoped to be able to return every other year with larger and larger groups of New York pilgrims.