Halfway through the pre-Easter weeks of sacrifice, it is clear Father Michael Martine did not give up being busy for Lent.
He has the pope to thank.
Martine is head of an army of 40 to 50 working since October toward the April 19 arrival of Pope Benedict XVI and 22,000 souls for a papal youth rally at Yonkers”™ St. Joseph”™s Seminary.
“It”™s a lot of work in a short amount of time, but I”™m confident it”™s all going to come together that weekend,” Martine said.
When not serving as St. Joseph”™s point-person for the papal visit, Martine is a professor of canon law ”“ the seminary is also a college ”“ and the seminary procurator, or overseer.
Martine ”“ pronounced martini ”“ is 37. He cited confidentiality regarding the visit”™s budget, but noted it possesses planning elements unique to the pope”™s world: 500 chalices are needed and confessionals for the repentant must be built. Without noting we are all sinners, Martine pointed out the broad plaza area that will be filled with confessionals. It seemed a lot were planned. “We”™re hoping people will want the sacrament,” Martine said.
The super-modern stage is something to make Aerosmith pea green with arena envy. There will be “name entertainment” ”“ Martine”™s phrase ”“ during the five-plus hours the youths fill the campus.
And there will be at least something of the atmosphere of a festival, with, as Martine said, “hamburgers, hot dogs, T-shirts and religious articles for sale.”
All of the logistics ”“ from sanitation to food vendors ”“ were handled out of archdiocese headquarters in Manhattan, Martine said. St. Joseph”™s will hum with hammer and saw beginning around April 9 when the stage equipment arrives. “We had to widen the roads in a few places to get the trucks in,” Martine said.
The new paint job in the Saints Peter and Paul Chapel and in the main entryway was completed for the visit. Both Martine and Jeannie Stapleton-Smith, St. Joseph”™s director of development, offered high praise for D”™Ambrosio Ecclesiastical Art Studio Inc. of Mount Kisco, the gold-leaf specialists who did the work. “They were like Michelangelos up there,” Stapleton-Smith said.
As a world leader, the pope warrants full-blown security and Yonkers police are working with federal, state, New York City and Vatican agencies to make the day run smoothly, according to Martine. Ticket-holders cannot give away or scalp their tickets: the name on the ticket must match the name on a photo i.d. Event ticket-holders will face metal detectors.
No bags or umbrellas will be permitted at the papal event. Said Stapleton-Smith: “If it rains, we”™ll be ready with ponchos.” Benedict need not worry about getting wet, except as any shepherd frets over his flock. “The stage is covered.”
This will be Pope Benedict XVI”™s second trip to the 42-acre St. Joseph”™s campus. He came in 1988 to preach when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
The pope”™s trip to Yonkers is part of a New York tour at the invitation of Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican”™s representative at the United Nations.
The trip has a number of historic elements, including:
”¢ Benedict celebrating mass at St. Patrick”™s Cathedral ”“ a first; previous St. Patrick”™s papal visits have featured only prayer services and blessings.
”¢ Benedict”™s 81st birthday is April 16 and will be celebrated at St. Joseph”™s via a girl”™s choral group singing “Happy Birthday” in the pope”™s native German.
”¢ Benedict”™s third anniversary of stepping into “the shoes of the fisherman” is April 19.
The auspicious visit, for Martine, means getting the choreography right. The youth buses will park at Yonkers Raceway. From there, shuttles will do the work between the seminary and the harness track.
Martine gestured to the stage site, a playing field by design and immaculate as is the rest of the campus. Wooden stakes driven into the turf presage construction. Otherwise, it looked like a soccer field. It was five weeks from Pope Day. “Still a lot to do,” he said.
The seminary is often called Dunwoodie, after its Yonkers neighborhood. The cornerstone was laid in 1891.
Among the seminary”™s artifacts are:
”¢ A chair handmade in Yonkers for Pope John Paul II”™s St. Joseph”™s visit in 1995. It still retained John Paul II”™s seal as of March 7. But it is now to be refitted with the seal of Benedict XVI. Martine is a born raconteur and he offered an anecdote surely little-known outside the world of Vatican insiders: Pope John Paul I, who served only 33 days as pope in 1978, changed the etiquette of the papal seal as one of his few acts. It would no longer feature a crown. John Paul II”™s papal coat of arms ”“ prominently supporting the Virgin Mary ”“ will be replaced by Benedict”™s, which features a bear, a nod to the forests of his native Germany, Martine said. “And there will be no crown.”
Ӣ An Irish penal chalice: The massӪ sacred cup harks to ChristӪs last supper; this Elizabethan version was made to be quickly disassembled and hidden because priests caught celebrating mass could be hanged in 17th-century Ireland.
The campus is also rich in statuary, with St Patrick and cornerstone-layer Archbishop Corrigan in line for a pre-pope power-washing and the flagpole slated for a fresh coat of paint.
The level of preparation is manifest in the flags that will fly during the pope”™s visit, already determined: The Stars and Stripes center, flanked by the flags of New York and the Vatican.
The youths will come from the 410 parishes of the archdiocese. Additionally, about 2,000 seminarians and religious persons in training to become brothers and nuns from around the nation will attend.
The six-plus hour event is part retreat and part extravaganza, capped by a 90-minute papal stage visit.
The seminarians and religious persons in training will stay at religious retreats between New York City and Ulster County.
The Archdiocese of New York has more than 3 million Catholics in Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Sullivan, the Bronx, Staten Island and Manhattan.
Before he meets the youth rally about 5 p.m., the pope will meet with 50 disabled children and their caregivers in the Saints Peter and Paul Chapel. When he enters, the New York Archdiocese Deaf Children”™s Choir will greet him by signing a hymn. The Cathedral of Saint Patrick Young Singers at the opposite end of the chapel will offer counterpoint, singing the same hymn.
After the rally, the pope will tour the campus to greet the crowds and head back to the papal mission in Manhattan. On Sunday, April 20, he will celebrate mass for about 60,000 at Yankee Stadium.
(Tickets were divvied out by parishes.) The 500 chalices Martine is tracking down are for the sacrament of Holy Communion during the stadium mass. Those administering communion will meet at St. Joseph”™s before the mass to collect their chalices.
