Our Lady of the World’s Fair: After Moses and Cardinal Spellman Brought the Pietà to the Fair, They Brought the Pope

By Ruth D. Nelson

From Our Lady of the World’s Fair: Bringing Michelangelo’s Pietà to Queens in 1964, by Ruth D. Nelson, a Three Hills book published by Cornell University Press. Copyright (c) 2024 by Ruth D. Nelson. Used by permission of the author and publisher.

Robert Moses had hoped the pope would visit the fair, but now a papal visit took on a new sense of urgency. The fair was in deep financial trouble, and this was the boost Moses believed it needed. When he and his team first met with Pope John XXIII in 1960 to enlist his support for the fair, Pope John “remarked jokingly, that perhaps a pope may turn up in New York to see the fair,” [1] but he did not live to see the fair open. After Cardinal Montini’s election as the next pope [Pope Paul VI] in June 1963, Moses’s hopes for a papal visit were renewed. Montini had proven himself to be an “intellectual with liberal sympathies,” had a passion for politics, and as pope became a Cold War arbiter. [2] The somewhat sudden decision to visit the Holy Land made him the first pontiff to leave Italy in more than a hundred years and, also, the first pope to fly in a plane. This did not go unnoticed by Moses, who issued a press release linking Pope Paul’s “precedent-shattering pilgrimage” to highlight the Vatican pavilion’s exhibit of the replica of the shrine-tomb of Saint Peter. [3] If the pope would fly to the Holy Land, why not to New York for the fair?

Arrival of the Pietà (Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Brooklyn Archives).

While Spellman was in Rome attending the Ecumenical Council, Moses had enlisted him to secure a commitment from the pope to visit the fair in its second season. If Spellman did approach the pope, it came to naught, but another opportunity arose when Thomas J. Deegan Jr., the fair’s executive chairman, made a similar call. Deegan called it a “long, long shot” and asked Moses not to be disappointed if he “[doesn’t] score,” noting that up until now, “no one else has succeeded either.” [4] On December 30, in a private audience arranged by Spellman, Deegan delivered a letter to the pope from Moses, renewing his invitation to the pope to visit the fair. Moses pointed out that in its first season, “14 million persons of all faiths and races” had visited the Vatican pavilion, reflecting not only “a tribute to the beauty and artistic value of the pavilion itself—and the Pieta of Michelangelo in particular—but a spiritual hunger for the eternal amidst all the diversity of modern life.” [5]

Formal photo of the staged Pietà (Courtesy of the Diocese of Brooklyn).

The New York Times reported that after his audience, Deegan was hopeful, adding that “His Holiness seemed receptive.” By now, the pope had not only flown to the Holy Land but had also visited India to attend the International Eucharistic Congress. Vatican sources, however, remained skeptical. [6] Less than a week later, the Vatican, through its press office and the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, sought to “cool hopes” of a papal visit to New York City. [7] But “no” to Robert Moses only meant “no for now.”

Vatican Pavilion exterior (Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Brooklyn Archives).

By the end of June 1965, as if in answer to prayer, the United Press International issued a cable datelined Vatican City, reading, “High Vatican sources have reliably reported that due to the urgency of world conditions, His Holiness, Pope Paul VI, may visit New York on October 23rd. He plans to stay only 2 or 3 days before returning to Rome.” [8] Moses’s payday had arrived. Although the final season of the fair was to end October 17, Moses was willing to extend the closing date by one week to accommodate the pope’s visit. This also meant that most pavilions would be requested to extend their operations. Then, only two months later, the Vatican, through its nuncio, Egidio Vagnozzi, seemingly dashed any hope of the pope visiting the fair in a memo to Moses declining his invitation. [9] However, Vagnozzi did not state that the pope was not coming to New York, just not to the fair. Hardly discouraged, Moses was not going to let this opportunity slip through his hands, especially now that the date for the pope’s visit was fixed for October 4, 1965.

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For its part, New York City turned itself inside out to be well prepared. In a review of the accommodations the city made for the papal visit, Sydney H. Schanberg wrote that “it was not a day for keeping books or worrying about money.” [10] Millions of dollars were spent, but many hesitated to discuss the cost, “as though it would be sacrilegious,” considering who the visitor was. Many services and facilities were donated. A “Papal Visit News Center” was set up in the wing of a high-rise building at United Nations Plaza, courtesy of Alcoa Plaza Associates, and volunteers from two public-relations firms worked the telephones, typed, and mimeographed the latest updates. To ensure that not one car in the pope’s motorcade would hit a pothole, the city’s Department of Highways assigned a two-thousand-man crew to the streets along the motorcade route one week before the visit. New York streets never looked so good. [11]

Ruth D. Nelson is an instructor in Art History at the College of DuPage, and the author of Searching for Marquette. Nelson was selected as a State of Illinois Humanities Council Road Scholar, and she is a recipient of the Rakow Grant for Glass Research from the Corning Museum of Glass.

[1.] Aldo Cortesis, “Vatican Hints Role in 1964 Fair Here,” New York Times, September 4, 1960, 1.

[2.] John Cooney, The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman (New York: Times Books, 1984), 215.

[3.] John Young to Robert Moses, press release, December 6, 1963, box 286, New York World’s Fair 1964–1965 Corporation records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library (NYPL-NYWF).

[4.] Tom Deegan to Robert Moses, December 24, 1966, box 286, NYPL-NYWF.

[5.] Moses to Pope Paul VI, December 1964, box 287, NYPL-NYWF.

[6.] “Fair Again Asks Pope to Attend,” New York Times, December 31, 1964, 20.

[7.] “Vatican Indicates Pope Won’t Come to the Fair,” New York Times, January 3, 1965.

[8.] John Young to Robert Moses, memorandum, June 25, 1965, box 287, NYPL-NYWF.

[9.] E. Vagnozzi to Robert Moses, August 30, 1965, box 287, NYPL-NYWF.

[10.] Peter Hebblethwaite, Paul VI: The First Modern Pope (New York: Paulist, 1993), 459.

[11.] Sydney H. Schanberg, “Sharing the Financial Burden,” in in The Pope’s Journey to the United States, ed. A. M. Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb (New York: Bantam Books, 1965) (hereafter Pope’s Journey), 76.

[12.] Bernard Weinraub, “A Transfixed City,” in Pope’s Journey, 52.