Pope Benedict XVI is the third Pope to visit the United States, and his visit here this month will mark the sixth time a reigning Roman Pontiff will set foot on American soil.

Pope Paul VI was the first, when he came to New York City to address the United Nations on October 4, 1965.  Shortly after disembarking from the papal plane at John F. Kennedy Airport, he said:  “Greetings to you, America!  The first Pope to set foot upon your land blesses you with all his heart…. May the cross of blessing which we now trace over your skies and your land preserve those gifts which Christ gave you and guarantees to you:  Peace, concord, freedom, justice – and above all the vision of life in the hope of immortality.  God bless this land of yours!”

Pope John Paul II was the next.  He visited the United States no fewer than four times – in 1979, 1987, 1995, and 1999.  During these journeys, he traveled from coast to coast, visiting, at various times, not only New York and Washington, D. C., but Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Des Moines, Chicago, Miami, South Carolina, New Orleans, San Antonio, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and St. Louis.  (Never Seattle!) At the conclusion of his final visit to the United States, on January 27, 1999, he spoke these words to those gathered in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis in Missouri:

“At the end of this century - at once marked by unprecedented progress and by a tragic toll of human suffering - radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be for the world an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society.… From salvation history we learn that power is responsibility: it is service, not privilege. Its exercise is morally justifiable when it is used for the good of all, when it is sensitive to the needs of the poor and defenseless…. America first proclaimed its independence on the basis of self-evident moral truths. America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience. And so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace the truth – the truth revealed by God.”