Later comes a visit to Our Lady Queen of Angels School, set amid public housing in the heavily Hispanic neighborhood of East Harlem.
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Before heading to the school, the pope will address the United Nations General Assembly and visit the 9/11 memorial and the National September 11 Museum for an interfaith service.
The students will also invite Pope Francis to pray with and for them during their time together. All are in the third or fourth grade at Our Lady Queen of Angels in East Harlem.
The group represents four Catholic schools in the city, each child picked from a drawing.
The pope is an Argentinian who was born to Italian parents, an experience many at the school can relate to.
“I was running around my house saying ‘Yes! Yes!”
Students of the school not selected to meet the pope have been studying his life and writing letters they hope will be delivered to him. Prompted to share any questions they might have for His Holiness, the children expressed curiosity about matters that may not be top of mind for the pope’s adult fans: “One student said ‘I want to find out if he still collects stamps, ‘” Greene recounted. To them, it’s giving the pope a false definition of New York.
“I want to ask him how could he still survive after he has only one lung and a half”, Aaron said.
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“He won’t see stuff like our job economy, homeless, and all that stuff”, Malcolm Robertson said. “He thought it was too fancy”, Ngueubou said.
