Exhale, everyone. It's over.
Exhale, everyone. It's over. See what happens when we allow ourselves to have a moment? When we take a deep breath and watch our city transform itself for an awesome event on a national stage.
Exhale, everyone. It's over.
See what happens when we allow ourselves to have a moment? When we take a deep breath and watch our city transform itself for an awesome event on a national stage.
The pope came. The pope went. Our city is still standing, the statue of William Penn is still atop City Hall, and the Eagles actually won.
We spent the last several months saying this was going to be a failure. Now we'll spend months saying it was too successful. That's what we do, God love us.
Was it perfect? No. The lines outside the parkway for Sunday's Mass had the pilgrims behind me in line comparing their situation to Dante's Inferno. At the 18th Street checkpoint, thousands from all over the country and the world - including 200 from Houston, right in front of me - waited for hours for the once-in-a-lifetime moment the city had promised.
After singing psalms, strumming guitars and snapping photos for two hours, the pilgrims started to get tense, and rightfully so.
"Let us in!" chants sounded from behind the security barriers. Someone's gotta answer for that.
Take poor Johanna Florez, 34, and her crew from Easton. They walked an hour and a half from the Wells Fargo Center, and then waited five hours in line, only to get through security as the Mass ended. She hoped to catch sight of the pope on his way out, but by the time she got there, he was gone.
"I need a beer," she said. Amen.
Businesses said they suffered, with lower takes than usual despite the huge crowds on the parkway. Apparently the pilgrims don't eat out much. Stephen Starr may never be the same again.
But on the bright side, the next time someone asks us to host a million people on the parkway, we can act like we've been there before.
Wasn't it worth it? The bell atop Independence Hall ringing as Pope Francis walked out to adoring crowds. The night-time motorcade as he would his way to the parkway - from above, the parkway looked so nice, the Holy Father might have mistaken it for his home in Europe. The Mass, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims bowing their heads in silence as a humble and historic pope blessed them all.
And if you took time to listen to this pope's words, what you heard was a message of extraordinary inclusivity.
"Anyone who wants to bring into this world a family which teaches children to be excited by every gesture aimed at overcoming evil - a family which shows that the Spirit is alive and at work - will encounter our gratitude and appreciation," he said. "Whatever the family, people, region or religion to which they belong!"
And don't we all agree that this transformed city was pretty awesome? The pedestrians and bikes in the middle of car-less streets, the papal block parties in the neighborhoods - and the near-miraculous attitude shift.
Who were we, Philadelphia?
I, for one, was walking around yelling "Viva Francisco" and wishing everyone I saw a good morning. What can I say? I got into it.
The pope seemed to genuinely enjoy himself, too. He got to see Aretha Franklin perform, and that kid from the Keystone State Boychoir with the pipes of an angel and an appreciation for the finer points of Mark Wahlberg's movies.
Francis got first-class access to an historic city. He killed it with a mother-in-law joke in his speech on the parkway. Come back anytime, Papa Francisco. I wish you could stay.
But hopefully he'll get back to the Vatican and take a couple days off. The stamina of that man! He has to be exhausted.
And so are we - happily so. There was a moment at the Mass when they announced that the next World Meeting of Families was headed to Dublin in 2018, and everyone burst into cheers - of excitement, and probably also of relief. We couldn't wish anything better on another city.
Good luck, Dublin. Some free advice: Build a fence around your city, and everything will go great.
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@MikeNewall