The last time a pope came to Philly

That gorgeous October day began with what Jim Murray calls the McMiracle.

The crowd was enormous, more than a million people jamming the Ben Franklin Parkway to see Pope John Paul II.

Murray, cofounder of the Ronald McDonald House, stood with his 9-month-old son - and a printed sign that spoke for the baby:

"I, too, am called John Paul, named in your honor, for His glory."

Amazingly, the pope walked right in front of them. Then he turned, placed his hand on the child's head, and blessed him - a moment captured in a photo that soon appeared on national television, and that even today can be found in Catholic homes.

"This picture changed my life in ways I never could have imagined," said Murray, at the time the Eagles' general manager and today president of Jim Murray Ltd.

The baby is now 35.

"My 15 minutes of fame came very early," said John Paul Murray, who works for Financial Advisors of Delaware Valley.

People tease him - if you're John Paul, where are George and Ringo? He doesn't mind. That blessing remains a source of comfort and security.

Now, with a new pope confirmed to arrive in Philadelphia in September, people are talking about the previous papal visit, about emotions and memories that remain indelible.

People were in the trees, Deborah McIlvaine recalled. Others stood on boxes, and on the concrete aprons of parkway monuments, trying to see a man who appeared as a white dot in the distance.

McIlvaine was a 14-year-old high school freshman on that day, Oct. 3, 1979, and, at first, she wasn't so excited to be there. Daughter of a Quaker mother and Catholic father, she didn't feel particularly religious.

But theirs was a Catholic family, her father was director of the McIlvaine Funeral Home in East Falls, which placed him at a particular intersection of life, death, and religion. When he told her and three of her four sisters to load up, they piled into the car.

She had never seen so many people, all focused on the same man, sharing the same experience. And the pope didn't come across as the big boss. Just the opposite, she said. He seemed humble and loving.

On the parkway that day - you couldn't call it a conversation, McIlvaine said, but she definitely felt the force of a shared spiritual event.

"I felt a strong connection to my Catholic upbringing, and the values that I learned," she said. "I had a lot of reverence for him, as a human being, and the way he was bringing people together in that moment."

In future years, she said, she would realize many people were critical of the pope for the church's failure to stop priests from sexually abusing children. She understands their feelings.

Today, she's talking to her sisters about the prospect of traveling, again, together, to see a pope in Philadelphia.

The windows on the dormitories had been blacked out. Police snipers stood on the roofs.

That's one thing Joe DiAngelo remembers. He was then the most junior of faculty members, in his first year at St. Joseph's University.

The pope was staying at the residence of Cardinal John Krol, with whom he shared friendship and Polish heritage. On Cardinal Avenue, near the southern edge of the campus, he greeted a large crowd.

DiAngelo, who spent a year in seminary, can no longer remember what the pope said. What struck him was the platform on which John Paul stood. It was so plain, so simple, as unassuming as the man.

When the pope finished talking, DiAngelo ran home to get his mother, then brought her to the motorcade route. They stood together at 63d and City Avenue as the pope passed.

"My mother swore he waved directly at her," said DiAngelo, today dean of the university's business school. "She went to the Pearly Gates believing that the pope waved at her. And I have no doubt that he did."

It was a real caper, one that began with the announcement of the pope's visit and ended with a prize artifact in the hands of a suburban church.

Logan Circle was picked as the site for the public Mass, the Civic Center for the Mass for priests and nuns. The archdiocese asked Tom Lane and Pat Logan of LML Corp. to provide two altars.

Lane and Logan had the parts made at the Boyertown Planing Mill, the panels assembled by LML, the completed pieces marbleized by Adolph Frey Co.

After the pope concluded the public Mass, the altar was taken, under police guard, to St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood.

That wasn't too far from Our Lady of the Assumption in Strafford, where Lane belonged.

Some parishioners began talking: What if they could get the altar?

"You can't be serious," one told another, according to a church history. "We'll never get it."

Lane wanted to try. He contacted the Rev. Joseph Graham, the archdiocese's director of institutional services, and made his case. Graham agreed to surrender the altar, with one condition: It had to be used by the church, not kept as a souvenir.

Lane called the rectory: "We got it!"

He and others piled into a truck and headed off to claim their prize.

On Sunday, Oct. 14, happy parishioners streamed into the church. So did the news media, making the church momentarily famous. The old plaster altar was removed and replaced.

"It was just amazing," Lane said in an interview. "It lifted up so many older Catholics, and it stimulated that parish into a rejuvenation."

Two months later, Lane was in Rome, invited to meet the pope.

"I built your altar in Philadelphia," Lane told him.

"God bless you," the pope responded.

In 1986, as part of a major church renovation, the papal altar was replaced with a smaller altar made of marble. The altar on which the pope said Mass for more than a million was returned to the archdiocesan archives.

Murray had been given special tickets for the public Mass, and when he arrived with his son and family, he found himself beside three cloistered nuns. They hadn't been outside in three years.

"Sisters," he said, spying empty chairs close to where the pope would appear, "you need better seats."

Murray led them to the front, thinking it was better to ask forgiveness than permission. He recognized a friend, Kevin Tucker, head of the local Secret Service office, later to be city police commissioner.

Photographer Edwin Mahan snapped the picture of the pope and his 9-month-old namesake minutes later.

Howard Cosell soon showed the photo to a national audience on Monday Night Football. People began requesting copies of the picture of the pope with the baby. Its popularity helped land Murray beside the pope in Alaska, and again in Italy.

It encouraged Murray's work in good causes too numerous to name, including the Ronald McDonald House, which from Philadelphia has grown to more than 350 locations.

"I don't think there's any accidents," Murray said. "From that picture, for me to have a chance to converse with a saint?"

215-854-4906 @JeffGammage