The day before Pope Benedict was to arrive in New York City on his first visit here as vicar, as God on earth - a taxicab burst into flames on Fifth Avenue.
It could not be extinguished and policemen and firemen cleared the street, closed it to traffic as the yellow Ford smoldered, alone in the middle of five lanes. This oddity, which hurt no one, occurred in the middle of the most elegant shopping drag in the free world. It burnt amid Cartier and Chanel and Tiffany's and directly in front of St. Patrick's cathedral, where Benedict XIV said mass only days later.
Curious, anxious Catholic that I am, I took this as a miracle. I took the burning cab as a modern day burning bush, here in the holy city of New York, an omen. An announcement. I listened for updates, straining my ears for the voice of God.
Throughout my life, I have turned to the Catholic Church (and not necessarily God) for guidance in difficult times. At fifteen, as my chest heaved from running to escape a court ordered institution, my partner Gustavo and I paused in a corn field for a moment to ask God for a car to steal so we could get away before the police came. He heard our pleas and as thanks, we later attended mass at the same parish where I served as altar boy.
We spoke to the priest afterwards, the three of us leaning on the hood of our stolen car in the parking lot, smoking cigarettes, and he advised that we turn ourselves in.
I am what my mother calls a “cultural Catholic.” An Irish Mexican Kentuckian from California, my Catholicism was my strongest identifier growing up. And still, my faith long since questioned and largely washed away, I get ashes on Ash Wednesday. I wear a scapular, assuring my entrance to heaven. I cross myself on planes at take off and landing. And when the Pope comes to visit, I see a burning cab as a messenger from God.
I call New York a holy city and I mean that. I realize that truth more and more now, as a recent transplant to New York from San Francisco. It is a city of shrines and holy places: to Babe Ruth in Yankee Stadium, to commercialism in Times Square and the holy of holies, to expansive wealth itself in the form of a bronze bull (father of a golden calf) at the foot of Wall Street.
I am a young person, in the midst of my obligatory American pilgrimage to New York City. Success! Trial by fire! We are actors, writers, dancers, models, piano players, tunneling each day for hours, clawing through the sewers from places like Williamsburg to emerge in the dazzling light of an island of staggering wealth and boundless opportunity. A holy city.
It has become such a protected shrine of wealth that you can no longer find homeless people or beggars on the street in Manhattan. They’ve been banished, in the same sweep by a Catholic mayor that turned Times Square into an elaborate parody of the Las Vegas parody of New York: pornography theaters turned into the most ostentatious Applebee's in America, the most opulent Olive Garden.
And awaiting the Pope’s arrival, I had to ask myself what his interpretation of this place would be. There is no room for the poor here. No room for the soul, even. Would he be like Jesus in the temple of cheaters and misers, tipping over tables and shouting?
Where would he visit? What would he say? As it turns out, he visited the holiest places in the holy city: Ground Zero and Yankee Stadium. These places, incidentally, are the inspiration for the majority of tattoos in this city, as well: a Yankees logo on one bicep, “Never Forget” on the other.
The Pope’s visit to Ground Zero is particularly eerie, praying over what is still in our minds, rubble. A destroyed monument of wealth. It feels biblical, like Jericho or Jerusalem. But there was no such profundity. Pope Benedict breezed through here like a rock star, shaking hands, waving. He prayed along classic themes: peace on earth, benevolence. And people came out for that.
People cried and cheered. They sang and prayed. It wasn’t earth shattering or life altering for any one that I could see, though. The flaming cab predicted nothing. And now Benedict is gone.
When I was younger, my mother and I would go to church together every Sunday. I was a teenager and these were difficult times in our relationship - shortly before she moved out - but we still went together, just she and I. I was the altar boy and she was the lector. Afterwards, we would go to a donut shop on Clement Street for something to eat. We didn’t usually talk. She would page through the bulletin, sipping her coffee. I would watch the old Chinese men smoke cigarettes and play cards, laughing and yelling. Not earth shattering or life altering, but these are some of my most pleasant memories of time spent with my mother.
The Pope’s presence here, though brief and kind of mundane, solidifies New York as a holy city. His choice to visit here, to visit Fifth Avenue and Ground Zero and Yankee Stadium makes those places that much holier. And to see the throngs of people lining the street, crying and cheering, indicates that his visit breathed some love and benevolence into a generally soulless place, if just for a couple of days.
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