Papal Visit to the United States

Several new resources have sprung up on the Internet in recent weeks focusing on the papal visit to the United States from April 15 to April 20:

AmericanCatholic.org provides a page on Pope Benedict's U.S. Visit that features articles, videos and audio providing backgrounders to the event; a blog that will be used to report before and after and on the scene during the historic visit of the Holy Father; a detailed itinerary for each day of the visit.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops Web sites also has a page that features Videos, Audio Files, Daily Blog Posts, and Backgrounders. There are also resource guides for teachers, catechists and youth ministers on the papacy:

• Core Theology on the Papacy (en español)
• Grades K-2 (en español)
• Grades 3-5 (en español)
• Grades 6-8 (en español)
• Grades 9-12/Adults (en español)
• RCIA and Teens (en español)

PowerPoint Presentations (recommended for grades 9-12):

• Universality of the Papacy (en español)
• Pope Benedict XVI (en español)
• Saint Peter (en español)

Ave Maria Press has also published online a series of 8 articles called From Peter to Benedict:

1. The Call of Peter by Msgr. Peter J. Vaghi

2. The Man Who is Pope Benedict by Msgr. Kevin Hart

3. The Leadership of Peter by Father Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap.

4. The Work of the Papacy Today by Msgr. Charles Antonicelli

5. Peter and the Call of the Gentiles by Father Francis Martin

6. Peter Through the Ages by Father John Dillon

7. Peter, the Risen Lord and the Early Church by Father Gerald O'Collins, S.J.

8. Theme "Christ our Hope" Prepares Us to Welcome the Holy Father by Jem Sullivan, Ph.D.

EWTN Global Catholic Network - also features an extensive section on the Pope's Visit to the US 2008

A team of journalists in Chicago has set up a Web site that will be monitoring the papal visit through live streaming video feeds. I received an email from Andrew Finlayson, Vice President and News Director, Fox News Chicago - WFLD Television. He wrote: "We have been working on providing live video of the Pope’s visit to America from many different television stations. On Monday April 14th from 6-7pm CST we will have an experimental internet broadcast about the Catholic religion. We will have on experts and commentators that the webcast viewers can chat with live. We will look at the issues facing the Church and discuss the importance of this visit. It is a national effort that you can see on www.livenewscameras.com. We of course hope to have raw feeds of the Pope’s travels at every possible opportunity. We are the only website that we know that is devoting this sort of effort to gather all of these live feeds into one location."