Catholic heritage sites in New York and D.C.

updated 3:53 p.m. ET April 2, 2008

NEW YORK - Pope Benedict XVI will visit Washington and New York April 15-20, with a schedule that includes plans for a Mass at the new Nationals Park, dinner at the White House, a speech at the United Nations, a visit to Ground Zero and Mass at Yankee Stadium.

Both cities and their surrounding areas are rich in Catholic heritage. Here are a few sites worth visiting.

New York: Any tour of Catholic history here must include St. Patrick's Cathedral, the cavernous, awe-inspiring, gothic-style church on Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st streets, near Rockefeller Center. This is the central church of the New York Archdiocese. The bronze doors bear carved images of New Yorkers who have been canonized.

Before the Fifth Avenue cathedral was built, the diocese was based at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral, at 233 Mott St. near Prince Street in Little Italy. The building was completed in 1815, and old tombstones fill an adjoining graveyard.

New York's earliest Catholic church, St. Peter's, dates to 1785, when one priest served the city's 200 Catholics. It is located at Barclay and Church streets, a block from the site of the World Trade Center.

"This church was damaged by parts of the plane on 9/11, and is the church where they brought the body of Father (Mychal) Judge," said Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling. Judge was a beloved Fire Department chaplain killed outside the twin towers. A piece of debris from Ground Zero shaped like a cross stands outside the church.

Elizabeth Bayley Seton, who founded the U.S. order of the Sisters of Charity and America's first parochial school, converted to Catholicism at St. Peter's in 1805. She was a widow with five children who had once lived with her husband at 8 State St., where today you'll find the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Shrine in Our Lady of the Rosary Church. The church is near the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

Seton was canonized in 1975, becoming the first U.S.-born saint. But the first naturalized American to achieve sainthood was Frances Xavier Cabrini, an Italian immigrant who was canonized in 1946 and is called the patroness of immigrants. Part of her remains are preserved under glass at the St. Frances Cabrini Shrine at 701 Fort Washington Ave. near 190th Street in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood. Her birthday and feast day are celebrated there annually — this year July 12-13 and Nov. 8-9. Worshippers visit to pray for healing and other intercessions. For group visits, call 212-923-3536; no charge but donations are welcome.

Near the Cabrini shrine is Fort Tryon Park. Here you'll find The Cloisters, which house 5,000 works of art, including the famed Unicorn Tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, saints' relics and paintings. Among the most important works is the 15th century painting "The Annunciation Triptych." The Cloisters was assembled from portions of five separate Medieval European cloisters. It is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which also has an extensive Medieval collection at its main building at 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

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Other Catholic sites of potential interest in New York include St. Malachy's Church, 239 W. 49th St., known as the "Actors' Chapel," where an 11 p.m. Saturday night Mass attracts theater-goers and cast members getting out from Broadway shows; the Pauline Book and Media Center at 150 E. 52nd St.; the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, on Park Avenue near 84th Street, where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' funeral was held; and St. Joseph's Church on East 87th Street at First Avenue, historically a German-speaking church. The pope, who is German, plans to be at St. Joseph's April 18 for a meeting with Protestant and Orthodox Christian leaders, Zwilling said.

Influential Catholics who lived in New York include the writer Thomas Merton, who was baptized at Corpus Christi Church on 121st Street and Broadway, and who once lived at 35 Perry St. in the West Village; and Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker movement. She is buried on Staten Island, in the Resurrection Cemetery, and lived her last years at Maryhouse, at 55 E. Third St., a "hospitality house" that still provides services to the poor. The Catholic Worker newspaper headquarters are at St. Joseph's House at 36 E. First St.

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