City ready to serve the pontiff

WHEN WEST Philly native Jerry Davis was a 22-year-old officer in the U.S. Marine Corps serving in Okinawa, Japan, in 1963, he couldn't go off base with his white comrades.

"Basically, when you went off base, you might as well have been in the deep South because that side of town was for whites only," Davis said. "So I had to go to the other side of town, which was for people of color."

The discrimination left Davis feeling "very, very alone," so instead of going out with his fellow officers, he volunteered at a Christian orphanage and spent his free time at a Catholic church.

"The church was very much a part of my ability to really function and not feel alone," Davis said. "It was the place that I could go and it was home. That's why the church is so very special to me."

In the years since, Davis, now 73, has become very special to his church and to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, so much so that he and his family have been invited to present the Communion wine to Pope Francis for blessing at the papal Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul tomorrow morning.

"I spent four years in the Marine Corps, we're supposed to be tough guys," Davis said. "But when I [learned I'd meet the pope], I lost it. I unashamedly lost it."

Davis and the Bowes family of Northeast Philadelphia - who will greet Pope Francis when he steps off the plane in Philadelphia tomorrow - spoke to reporters yesterday at the Pennsylvania Convention Center ahead of Pope Francis' visit.

Earlier in the day, Mayor Nutter held his 10th and final papal news conference at the Convention Center, where he touched on crowd control, the pope's tendency to go rogue and, of course, fencing.

Nutter said that "higher fencing" for the papal visit will only be found in areas connected to metal detectors or areas further away from Independence Hall and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for "crowd control."

"The overwhelming majority of areas from Independence Hall to the Art Museum, you will either see bike racks or fencing that is 3-to-4-feet high," he said.

Crowd control outside of the secure perimeters will fall to the city, Nutter said, and while the city is not capping capacity in those areas, it will "obviously use good judgment," he said.

"It would only be for public safety purposes, if there are literally too many people in a public area," Nutter said. "All open public areas are open public areas unless there has been some restriction placed on them for some reason."

When questioned about how much access the "people's pope" will have to actual people in Philadelphia, Nutter said that it would probably be somewhere between what has been seen so far in D.C. and today in New York City but not as much as in South America.

"I am not anticipating that Pope Francis is going to be in a mosh-pit kind of situation with the crowd," Nutter said. "But he is known to completely go off script, he is very spontaneous . . . Sometimes we don't know what he's going to do."

Police Chief Charles Ramsey, who was not a part of Nutter's news conference but who was in attendance, was asked what would happen if the pope wanted to go to, say, Kensington.

"We go with him. Seriously. I am not going to tell the pope what he can't do," Ramsey said. "We'll be flexible. The good thing about a person like this who's rather unpredictable, [is that] someone who might want to do something [to them] wouldn't know either."

Following Nutter's news conference, the World Meeting of Families and the Archdiocese unveiled several gifts they will present to Pope Francis. The gifts include a bound book of drawings from school kids, an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence etched in glass (a nod to the pope's speech at Independence Hall) and a snazzy red, white and blue jacket that was made for Pope Francis by Dorothy Franklin, a parishioner at St. Cyprian's Parish in West Philadelphia.

"I never thought this would happen," Franklin said, of how she felt upon learning her gift would be presented to the pope. "It can be done. You never know what can happen tomorrow or the next day."

Nobody knows that to be more true than Davis and the Bowes family, who were chosen to meet Pope Francis.

Much has been written of the Bowes family of five, whose patriarch, Rick, was shot on duty while working as a Philadelphia police officer in 2008, but what remains to be written is how their audience with the pope will affect the family, especially the three children, for years to come.

"The [kids] don't realize this but after Saturday morning, their lives will be changed forever," Rick Bowes said.

As for Davis, who attended West Catholic High School and worked at his parish rectory as a youth, he gives credit for his opportunity to meet Pope Francis to his father, Isaac, who worked two jobs as a laborer and as a bar cleaner to raise 10 kids after Davis' mother died when he was just 3 years old.

"After cleaning the bars, he'd come back home and he'd take out his rosary and say the rosary every night and he'd pray for each of us by name," Davis said. "I believe that's why I'm standing here today."

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