Yankee Stadium set to welcome its third pope

When Pope Benedict XVI celebrates Mass in Yankee Stadium in the Bronx on April 20, he will be the third -- and probably the last -- pope to celebrate a liturgy there.

Yankee Stadium, which has been the venue for two previous papal visits, closes its doors at the end of the 2008 baseball season. The team moves next year to a new stadium across the street.

The next time a pope visits, therefore, he will probably offer Mass at the new location.

First to visit

The first time a pope visited Yankee Stadium was on October 4, 1965. That Mass was part of a landmark visit by Paul VI, the first pontiff to visit the U.S.

At a packed Yankee Stadium, he appealed to all Christians to "love peace and serve its cause."

Pope Paul was given a pair of jeans by youth who attended the Mass, and blessed a stone that had been removed from St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and carried to New York to be placed in the foundation for a newly constructed seminary in the New York Archdiocese.

Second pope

Fourteen years later, Pope John Paul II went to Yankee Stadium to celebrate a Mass with a crowd of 80,000.

In what has been referred to as his "Sermon on the Mound," he addressed what he called the rampant consumerism of the West, and insisted that Christians break away from that "exhausting and joyless" way of living.

The popular pope entered the stadium in the back of an open limousine. After he got out of the car, he lifted a child high above his head to the roar of the crowd.

Plaques

Both popes enjoy the unique honor of being the only non-baseball figures to be commemorated with a plaque in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium.

The plaques, donated by the Knights of Columbus, are surrounded by such icons of Yankees history as Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.

In answer to a classic baseball trivia question, the popes are, along with Roger Maris and Miller Huggins, two of four former cardinals honored at Yankee Stadium. The latter two were associated with the St. Louis Cardinals.

(About 800 buses -- including 10 from the Albany Diocese -- will arrive at Yankee Stadium for an April 20 papal Mass, the largest number of buses ever to arrive at a single site in New York City. There will be 800 concelebrants -- cardinals, bishops and priests -- on the altar, and 550 more priests in the stands to distribute communion. Some information for this article was obtained from Marty Appel, former public relations director of Yankee Stadium and the Public Relations Department of Yankee Stadium. Visit www.yankees.com.)

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