On September 22, Pope Francis stepped onto American soil for the first time. He arrived from Cuba at Joint Base Andrews.  The next day, he had a meeting with Barack Obama at the White House. Afterwards, the anticipated address to Congress by the pope happened Thursday morning, where he told Congress to “heal the world’s open wounds.”

After his speech to Congress, he headed to the “big apple” to do an evening prayer at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. While he was in New York, he visited the United Nations. He is an advocate for immigrants and told Congress to “accept them as their own.” He also did a multi-religious ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial. Afterwards, he visited Our Lady Queens of Angels in Harlem. Later in the day, he gave a mass in Madison Square Garden to end his New York City trip.

He then went to Philadelphia to visit a correctional facility, which isn’t usually something a pope would be known to do. He also hosted a mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Peter’s and St. Paul’s. Cloistered nuns in Philadelphia who had prepared for the pope’s arrival, made 100,000 communion wafers for this mass. Afterwards, he then visited Independence Mall, where American history was once made with the constitution being signed.

While he was traveling the streets on his motorcade, he stopped to kiss a ten year old disabled boy named Michael Keating. He is suffering from cerebral palsy. While the surreal moment occurred, Keating was grasping onto rosary beads. According to USA Today, Keating’s mother said she felt “totally blessed and loved” in the pope’s presence. She also said her son was acting up on and off throughout the trip to see the pope, but he seemed to be calm in the pope’s presence.

His six day trip came to an end on September 27, departing back to Rome.

There is a website called, “barna.org,” that took a survey for about how Americans feel about Pope Francis. It was a pie chart that was broken into seven parts saying “I’ve never heard of him,” “very favorable,” “somewhat favorable,” “undecided,” “somewhat unfavorable,” “very unfavorable,” and “I don’t know enough.” The two biggest percentages on the pie chart were “very favorable” and “somewhat favorable.” It is obvious that Pope Francis tried to make his American visit worthwhile by being attentive to America’s issues.