By FEDERICA VALABREGA
Observer Staff
April 2, 2008

With just two weeks until Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States, architectural students at the Catholic University of America are working all hours in the college’s woodshop to complete projects necessary for the Pope’s trip.

Photo by FEDERICA VALABREGA
Architecture students John-Paul Mikolajczyk (left) and Ryan Mullen (right) in their office working on their project.

Three months ago the Archdiocese of Washington sponsored an architectural competition in which the winners would build an altar for the Pope’s visit. The winners, 25-year-old Ryan Mullen, from New Hampshire, and his roommate John-Paul Mikolajczyk, 23, from New York, have been working on refining the project—an altar in white maple adorned with five crosses symbolizing Christ’s five wounds, and a base of intertwined aluminum resembling Saint Peter’s net. In addition, the two architectural master’s students have also built a pulpit and a Papal chair with an inscribed coat-of-arms. All the liturgical furniture made will be used to celebrate the Holy Mass on April 17.

“The competition started on Friday and so all through the weekend, Saturday, Sunday, ending on Monday, we just did research, went to the library, we went online, looked at images of past Papal visits to get a nice idea of the scale of liturgical furnishing, how simple and how complex they had to be to try to kinda get a feeling of what worked in the past,” Mullen said. “The design was due on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. and we finished 15 minutes before it was due.”

It is not clear whether the two students will actually meet the Pope personally due to security measurements and the plethora of people who will be present at the event, according to Mikolajczyk.

“As long as we finish everything in time, God willing, Mass will be said and the altar that we designed will be used and that in itself is the biggest honor, the one that does not get thought of at first, but, you know, we are pretty excited,” Mikolajczyk said.

The Archdiocese, in collaboration with Catholic University, also sponsored an essay contest. The winner of that will have a chance to meet His Holiness. Students were asked to submit a 500-word essay explaining how Catholic education changed their life.

“Father O’Connell conceived the essay contest. He thought it would be another way to generate students’ interest and enthusiasm in the Holy Father’s visit” said Victor Nakas, spokesman in the office of Public Affairs at the university. “He also wanted them to be thinking in advance about the topic that the Holy Father himself will be addressing at Catholic University, namely Catholic education.”

For now the university has received 128 essays that will be read and evaluated based on content and level of writing by a panel of six judges from the Catholic University community – all experts on Catholic education. The winner will be announced on or before April 9.

“You are 500 words away from meeting the pope. I thought that was a good idea,” said Sister Mary Ann Walsh media director of the United States Conference of the Catholic Bishops, which is working with the Archdiocese of D.C. to plan out the Papal arrival.

Photo by FEDERICA VALABREGA
Mullen shows the digitalized sketch drawing of the Papal chair.

“We are all very excited and enthusiastic. It is a great honor for the Holy Father to be coming to our country,” said Walsh. “It is our first chance to see Pope Benedict up close. People have heard about him, but none of them had the interaction with him to see for themselves what kind of pastoral man he is. Now he will be in their own country and they will have a better understanding of who the pope is.”

The day of his 81st birthday, April 16, His Holiness will visit the White House, where he will meet with President Bush, then head to Catholic University’s campus. He will be welcomed by 4,000 students singing “Happy Birthday” in different languages, according to Nick Berg, 20, a student for the office of campus ministry.

“I have been hearing that we are supposed to be singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him,” he said. “But I am not sure that that is actually gonna happen, but I heard rumors of that. So, we’ll see.”

But the Catholic University of America is not the only organization that has been planning for the Pope’s visit over the last five months. The Archdiocese of D.C. has been in charge of setting the stage at the Washington Nationals’ new baseball stadium. It has been planning out the pre-Mass entertainment and choosing the members of the four choirs that will sing in the ceremony.

Rehearsals for the choirs are ongoing – the last one was on Monday March 31 the next one will be on Sunday April 6 at 4 p.m. at Elizabeth Seton High School in Bladensburg, Md., where the four choirs will be practicing together.

Just last month the Archdiocese ended the auditions for the main adult choir. The 250 members were chosen from the parish communities around D.C. and among Catholic University choir students.

According to the program released by the Archdiocese press office, the Papal choir will be singing music that reflects the “diversity of the Archdiocese”, such as “Sing Aloud Unto God My Strength,” by Daniel Nelson and “Spirit of God Within Me,” by Robert Le Blanc – all in English.

According to the office of the Archdiocese, among the special guests in attendance will be Placido Domingo, the internationally known Spanish tenor and Director of the Washington National Opera.

The children’s choir will be composed of 175 students from Catholic elementary and middle schools in the Beltway area.

They will be singing “Send Fourth Your Spirit,” by Andrew Right in English and “Ave Verum,” by Mozart in Latin. The Gospel choir will perform “I Call You Upon God,” by Leon Roberts and “Lord Make Me an Instrument,” by Roger Holland both in English. Sixty-five people from 35 different countries will constitute a special Intercultural choir that will chant in Zulu, Spanish and French.

Over 46,000 people are expected for the Papal Mass on the morning of April 17, and tickets sold out over a month ago. There are already 5,000 people are on the waiting list.

According to the Archdiocese Communication Director, Susan Gibbs, the event drew interest from as far away as Australia, and they could have filled the stadium three more times. Instead, they decided to couple the assigned seating in the stands with extra chairs on the field to seat as many participants as possible.

The morning’s pre-Mass entertainment will begin at 5:30 a.m., with live music from the choir and a public viewing of the winning submissions from a children’s video contest. The contest was open to all Catholic students from the Archdiocese of Washington and the Dioceses of Baltimore and Arlington. Students were required to produce a two-minute video welcoming the Holy Father. As a prize, the students would receive 15 tickets for the Pope’s Mass, said Kathy Dempsey, assistant director of communication for the Archdiocese of D.C.

Photo by FEDERICA VALABREGA
The final model includes a pulpit, altar and a Papal chair.

The last to greet the Pope during his first overseas visit will be representatives from five of the largest religious communities. Members of the Jewish, Buddhist, Hindus, Muslim and Jain faiths will participate in an inter-religious meeting that will take place at the John Paul II Cultural Center on the night of April 17.

“He is extremely erudite and grandfatherly, kind and humble; he will make a very good impression in the intercultural group and ecumenical guests,” said Father James Massa of the United States Conference of the Catholic Bishops and organizer of the event.

“I think they will warm up to him very easily especially because he will be speaking a message of hope and peace and will remind us of the principles and ideals on which the country was founded: freedom of service and respect for life. It will be a great night,” said Massa.

After the Pope’s speech, the five leaders of the religious creeds will each present His Holiness with a gift symbolic of their faith as a sign of gratitude and respect.

The Jewish community will offer a silver menorah, a seven-arm lamp used to light the temple in Jerusalem as light is representative of God’s continuing promise of Peace. The Muslim Student Association will present the Holy Father with a Quran bound in green leather, the traditional color of Islamic culture. The Jain religion will offer a metallic cube, which represents the practitioner’s principles of non-violence. The Hindi gift will be a brass incense burner with the symbol “OM” engraved. Hindis believe “OM” is the primeval sound of universe. Finally, the Buddhist representative will bring a bronze bell similar to the ones use to start and end the meditation period.

“At the end of the night the Pope will present his best wishes of Good Passover to the Jewish Community that will celebrate the anniversary of the liberation of their compatriots from Egypt on April 20,” said Massa.

His Holiness will leave D.C. in the early hours of April 18 to fly to New York City. Later that day, he will address the United Nations on topics such as the need for peace in the Middle East.