Jasperite Sees Pope in New York

Monticello News stringer reporter, Janet Jernigan, happened upon a once in a lifetime news story and shared the story and pictures.

On September 25, she was visiting her childhood friend, Judy, in New York City. She lives at 65th Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan.

“When I arrived for my visit, I noticed that there was a heavy police presence in her neighborhood. At the time neither of us knew that the Pope’s motorcade would be passing within a block of her apartment several times during his visit.

“We were walking to the local grocery and stopped to talk to some police officers standing on the corner, Officers Matos, Lee and Sumsky (all on temporary assignment from Queens) and asked if the Pope might be nearby.

“They told us that the Pope motorcade would be coming up the street in about 15 minutes. At first there were only a few of us, then hundreds suddenly appeared. As you can see from the photo above, the Pope was riding in the now-famous black Fiat with the window down, smiling and waving at the crowd. We didn’t have to have any tickets or stand for hours waiting. Later that day we were there again quite coincidentally when the Pope rode by again.”