The Time Pope Francis Came to Philly and Made Love Simple

In September of 2015, Pope Francis, who died Monday, April 21, spent two glorious days in Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families — a week-long gathering of the Roman Catholic Church that occurs every three years.

His visit culminated in an outdoor Mass on the mile-long Benjamin Franklin Parkway, attended by an estimated million people who might not’ve been able to see him from where they stood but got to be part of something bigger than the crowd they were in.

Here’s what I wrote about the pontiff’s visit, back when I was a columnist at The Philadelphia Daily News. I remember that beautiful week like it happened yesterday (honestly, the memory is even kind of soft-lit), and this column explains why.

Nuns sit inside the Reading Terminal Market.

We needed this so badly.

We needed a week to ponder big questions about God, love and why we’re here. To say out loud that strong societies are made of strong families — the ones we create and the ones that, guided by the hand of the divine, find us and hold us tight.

And we needed to spin in the orbit of Pope Francis, an ordinary man who, early in his papacy, offered an extraordinary analogy of the church he was chosen to shepherd.

Pope Francis, a humble man who celebrates the magnificence of all, especially those despairing alone on society’s margins — the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the incarcerated, the abandoned.

“I see the church as a field hospital after battle,” he said. “It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds …”

There were so many transcendent moments during the weekend wrap-up of the 2015 World Meeting of Families. The one that put the first of many lumps in my throat happened Saturday afternoon when the pontiff walked onto a modest podium at Independence Hall for his speech about religious liberty and immigration.

As he stepped slowly toward the lectern that Abraham Lincoln once used to deliver the Gettysburg Address, the Philly Pops Festival Brass played American composer Aaron Copland’s stirring Fanfare for the Common Man.

We’ve all heard its noble strains before — usually appropriated as the soundtrack to maudlin TV sports montages. Its soaring notes provide emotional ballast to slo-mo footage of an athlete’s solitary predawn workouts on the ice rink, or in the lap pool, or around a snowy track for the thousandth time.

In the closing frames, we see the athlete standing in gold-medal glory, victorious over those whose best wasn’t good enough.

Two National Guardsmen whom Polaneczky fed while on duty during the pontiff's visit. Right: Pope Francis souvenirs. — Two National Guardsmen whom Polaneczky fed while on duty during the pontiff’s visit. Right: Pope Francis souvenirs.

A winner, separate and untouchable. No longer common.

How lonely and sad.

On Saturday, Copland’s gorgeous composition was finally paired with the right subject: Pope Francis, a humble man who celebrates the magnificence of all, especially those despairing alone on society’s margins — the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the incarcerated, the abandoned.

His brand of love is available to all of us to exercise; we needn’t wait for the perfect time, the perfect person, the perfect reason. We can just love, right now.

His words and countenance this weekend were so peaceful and relaxed, he was able to telegraph a truth we didn’t know we were desperate to hear until we heard it:

We are blessed and worthy just as we are, so abundantly loved by God that we have nothing to lose by loving others. There is no scarcity. So we can stop grabbing at status, hoarding comforts, and yearning for a win, because those things never will fill the hole we think we’re filling.

But love will — and only when it’s given away. Not just to some, but to all, at all times.

The pope of hope made it all seem so simple. Not easy, but simple.

His brand of love is available to all of us to exercise; we needn’t wait for the perfect time, the perfect person, the perfect reason. We can just love, right now.

What a message for an entire city to bathe in for two astounding days. I feel bad for those who fled town before Pope Francis got here, who didn’t get to feel peace and love thicken the Philly air the way humidity does in summer.

The peaceful, joyous vibe that lit the Ben Franklin Parkway this weekend was a tonic to the glitz and din of the Made in America concert that overtook the same space just three weeks ago. Nothing against Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and the outsized entertainers who growled, howled, thrusted and strutted during a weekend of Budweiser-sponsored exhibitionism.

Hey, it’s what they do.

But we were long overdue to balance out all the ego, noise, partying and wealth of our public mega-events with something low-tech and high-heart, whose spectacle came not from strobe lights and sick beats but from a holy man’s megawatt smile.

The columnist revels in vehicle-free Broad Street. The Vine Street Expressway was also closed to traffic. Photos by her husband, Noel Weyrich.

We just didn’t know we needed the rightsizing until we experienced it for ourselves.

Despite the security overkill, the overhead choppers, the military presence on every corner (but what friendly and polite men and women they were!), the power of the pope’s message came through with the intimacy of a whisper:

Common men and women, doing the common work of loving the world, is all we need to live extraordinary lives. It all starts with us.

And we can start right now.

Rest in peace, Your Holiness. Thanks for giving J.D. Vance a much-needed talking-to before you departed this earth. And please give my folks a bear hug when you see them. They adored you.

Ronnie Polaneczky, a former Daily News columnist — where this article originally ran — is the founder of Ronnie Listens. Sign up for her Substack, where this piece also ran.