A Pope’s Blessing For Queens

By Aaron Rutkoff & LIZ GOFF

For New York City’s nearly two million Catholics, Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park was a place of prayer on Oct. 6, 1995 as Pope John Paul II held mass before throngs of eager worshippers.

The morning sun beamed down on the 100,000 people who attended the papal mass.  The Pope arrived to the Aqueduct at around 9 a.m. aboard the bubble-domed vehicle often dubbed the “Popemobile,” but ticket holders lucky enough to participate in the ceremony began to file into the racetrack as early as 5 a.m.

As many as 700 priests and deacons participated in the mass, with over 400 distributing Communion to the crowds, according to Monsignor Otto L. Garcia, the Vicar General and Chancellor who headed the planning committee for the event.

Tickets were distributed to each parish in the Brooklyn and Queens Diocese based on a percentage of reported Sunday Mass attendance.  Pope John Paul II chose to emphasize youth participation at the mass, and officials said that two-thirds of the tickets distributed to the event would be earmarked for young people.

In his homily, the Pope said, “The Church constantly invokes the Holy spirit upon individual communities, and today we renew that invocation here, at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens,” and asked the crowd, “In the midst of the magnificent scientific and technological civilization of which America is proud, and especially here in Queens, in New York, is there room for the mystery of God?”

While the Pope’s presence was a blessing for the City’s Catholics, it created a logistical nightmare for the Police Department and federal agencies charged with his safety, especially since his visit came one week after the sentencing of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.  Air space over the areas the Pope visited was closed and special cameras tracked his every movement.

Officials put the cost of security at around $6 million. 

The Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens spent $1.5 million preparing Aqueduct for the visit, which included the construction of a main platform for the Papal altar and the placement of 60,000 seats on the track itself.

Nine volunteer ambulance corps from Queens patrolled the crowd to tend to health emergencies, and ended up treating 142 people, mostly for heat exhaustion and minor injuries.  The biggest crisis at the event stemmed from a malfunction in the track’s water system.  Spectators reported lines stretching the length of a city block waiting for one of the few functioning fountains.

The mass at Aqueduct Racetrack marked Pope John Paul II’s second trip to Queens.  In October 1979, he appeared before 50,000 enthusiastic worshippers at Shea Stadium in Flushing. 

Dehydration was never a threat, however, as the stadium full of the faithful endured a down pour while waiting for the Pope, only to have the skies briefly clear as John Paul II arrived to huge ovations.