Local Catholic embarks on papal pilgrimage
Bill DiFabio shows off his bobblehead of Pope Francis outside Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Washington, where he is a member.
From left are Tom Uram, who designed a medallion to commemorate Pope Francis’ visit, Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik, Andrew Uram and Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto. The pope spoke Wednesday on the White House lawn.
Bill DiFabio has traveled to Philadelphia many times to cover the Steelers and Penguins, and he’s been to Vatican City twice to see a pope, but this weekend marks the first time he’ll be in the City of Brotherly Love in the presence of a pontiff.
After returning from a visit to the Vatican, the 63-year-old Washington resident mentioned in early May on his radio program, The Bill DiFabio Variety Show on WKKX in the Ohio Valley, that Pope Francis was supposedly planning a visit to the United States and that he’d like to witness the event.
Security Travel Bureau of Wheeling, W.Va., was sponsoring a trip to the papal visit and asked DiFabio if he’d like to be the chaperone on its bus.
“I thought it would be a good deal,” said DiFabio, an Observer-Reporter sports contributor who’s also known to listeners of local radio station WJPA, in an interview Thursday morning. “It’s a huge challenge. I might have bargained for too much, but I don’t care.
“I understand there’s over 12,000 buses going. We might have to see the pope on the big screen, but we’ll be there.
You know what he is in Italy?” DiFabio said of Francis. “He’s a rock and roll star. He’s the Mick Jagger of the Catholic religion.”
DiFabio was going around town Thursday with a rosary in a Francis case and a Francis bobblehead doll he bought during his trip to Vatican City.
“I should’ve got the bigger one,” he said of the bobblehead. Papal merchandise – puzzles, calendars – were everywhere.
“Cha-ching!” DiFabio echoed.
The age range of those going is from 30s to 70s, and, unlike many groups bunking in makeshift quarters during the pontiff’s stop in Philadelphia, they’re staying in a hotel, which limited the number of passengers boarding the bus to 45.
The papal pilgrimage coincides with the World Meeting of Families this weekend in Philadelphia. The pope’s first public event is Saturday morning Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Peters and Paul, followed by a visit to Independence Hall.
After a meeting with bishops at St. Martin’s Chapel at St. Charles Bororromeo Seminary and a visit with inmates at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, the pope will preside at a Mass for the World Meeting of Families at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Francis is scheduled to depart for Rome at 8 p.m.
The bus will be leaving Wheeling at 5 a.m. Saturday and heading east for six hours toward a bus rendezvous point 4 1/2 miles away from Francis’ Saturday events.
“Every bus, I think, has to pay a $690 permit fee to get into the area that’s blocked off. I don’t know if Philly is prepared for this. I talked to my media friends in Philadelphia, and they said, ‘Good luck, Bill.’
“Father (William P.) Feeney from IC, he told me the same thing. I’ve been to 30 Super Bowls and I know you stand in line for hours to get through security. I’m going to be like a little ant on an anthill.” He won’t be broadcasting from Philadelphia but, like any spectator, will be snapping many a photo.
Marianne DiFabio couldn’t make the trip with her husband, but Lola Miller, Bill DiFabio’s producer and co-host, who is Jewish, will be. She plans to wear a Wheeling Central Catholic High School shirt because WKKX broadcasts the school’s football games.
DiFabio’s fascination with pontiffs goes back a long way. “When I was a kid I had a Super 8 movie projector. In 1964 there was a pope visiting Yankee Stadium – don’t ask me what pope,” and young DiFabio would watch film footage of the Mass (with Pope Paul VI) again and again.
He had an audience with Pope John Paul II that “lasted about 30 seconds,” DiFabio recalled, but he remembers the blessing.
This won’t be the first time DiFabio has been in charge of a group of travelers. In 1980, when he was broadcasting from radio station Y-108, he organized nearly a thousand citizens of Steelers Nation to board a train in Pittsburgh to see the black and gold clash with the Browns in Cleveland.
The pope’s trip to the United States also includes time in New York City and Washington, D.C., where a busload of the faithful from Greene County Roman Catholic churches were headed Wednesday. The Rev. Francis Frazier shepherded members of the flock from St. Hugh in Carmichaels, St. Marcellus in Jefferson, St. Thomas in Clarksville and St. Ann in Waynesburg.
Emailing a photo to the Observer-Reporter on Wednesday was Tom Uram of Eighty Four, who designed a medallion commemorating the papal visit. Enclosing the medal is a folder in both English and Spanish highlighting the canonization of Franciscan Friar Junipero Serra, known as the Apostle of California, the first saint to be canonized on American soil.