Abp. Vigneron, Mayor Duggan to extend invitation to Pope Francis

DETROIT — An effort spearheaded by Catholic high school students in Detroit to bring a second papal visit to the city has caught the attention of Mayor Mike Duggan and Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron.

Now, an official invitation will be extended to Pope Francis to add a Detroit stop to his planned U.S. visit in September 2015, when he is tentatively scheduled to attend the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

Archbishop Vigneron said he will officially extend the invitation to Pope Francis after a meeting with Mayor Duggan, who has said the city is on board with the effort.

The campaign to bring the pope to Detroit was started this spring by students at Detroit Cristo Rey High School, who launched a Facebook page to gather support for the grassroots effort. The students wrote letters and encouraged Catholic elementary students at nearby Gesu, Holy Trinity and Holy Redeemer schools to do the same. As of Sept. 16, the page “Let’s Bring Pope Francis to Detroit in 2015” had 787 “likes.”

Margaret Cone, a local lawyer who is helping the students organize the campaign, said she hopes a potential visit from Pope Francis would be “a celebration of the future of Detroit.”

“And as we do this, as we celebrate, who better to be part of the celebration than Pope Francis?” Cone said.

Detroit joins a growing list of other U.S. cities that have invited Pope Francis to visit when he presumably makes his first trip to the United States next year. Though the pope has not officially confirmed the trip, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput has said Pope Francis will attend the World Meeting of Families, and there has been speculation New York City and Washington, D.C., could also be on the agenda.

In early August, more than a dozen Detroit Catholic students met with the city’s deputy mayor, Ike McKinnon, and the city’s first lady, Lori Maher, about the project to bring the pope to southeast Michigan. When they were greeted with support, the Mayor Duggan decided to take the next step of reaching out through official channels to invite the pope to town.

That led to a meeting with Archbishop Vigneron, who was enthusiastic with his support, said Ned McGrath, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Detroit.

McGrath said the archbishop had been aware of the grassroots effort, and would be “honored and delighted if the Holy Father were to come here.”

McGrath also said the archbishop and the archdiocese were “encouraged by the support shown” for the effort, which included the mayor’s office.

The next step will be for Archbishop Vigneron to relay the invitation on behalf of the city to Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, papal nuncio to the United States, who would then pass it along to the Vatican.

If Pope Francis does decide to visit, it would be the second time a pontiff had visited the Motor City, after Pope St. John Paul II’s historic two-day stop in 1987 at the behest of the late Cardinal Edmund C. Szoka.

Speaking to the Detroit Free Press, Deputy Mayor McKinnon said a potential papal visit would send “a great and powerful message” about the city’s vitality.

Letters from the Cristo Rey students have ranged from excited to emotional, with one student telling the Holy Father she “stopped believing in God a long time ago,” but still holds out hope.

“I want you to preach to Detroit, to tell us that we are saved; to talk about our Father,” she wrote. “Lots of people are starting not to believe in God. We need your help.”

With hundreds of letters in hand, the students are now planning ways to send them to the pope.

James, an elementary student at Holy Redeemer School, starts his letter politely — “Dear Pope Francis: How are you?” — before musing about the Holy Father’s touch with the sick and homeless. “It is amazing that you aren’t afraid to touch people who have deformities and diseases. How can you do that? James asks. “You go and feed homeless people and don’t ask for anything.”