By Richard Magat

Sep. 30, 2015:  Around Labor Day, a frenzy usually breaks out for tickets to the finals of the US Open Tennis tournament. This year a competing attraction was the visit of Pope Francis to the United States, in particular, his procession through New York's Central Park.

For that event, 80,000 free tickets were distributed in a lottery. That did not prevent energetic scalpers from plying their trade, albeit illegal, with some tickets going for as much as $5,000. The largest event in the Pope's visit to the city was a mass in Madison Square Garden, tickets for which were being distributed through individual parishes. Time Warner Cable viewers could see the visit on Channel 199.

The historic event has shone a spotlight on an aspect of New York usually lost in the din of entertainment and sightseeing spectacles--that is, evidence of the religious bedrock of the metropolis. The motivation of immigrants seeking religious liberty is well known. The major faiths are visible throughout Manhattan.

For the Papal visit, the most prominent is St. Patrick's Cathedral, which underwent a multimillion dollar renovation in advance. A mile north along Fifth Avenue is the monumental Jewish synagogue Temple Emanu-el, an echo of Shearith Israel, the first Jewish congregation established in North America, founded in New Amsterdam in 1654 with the settlement of a small group of Jews from Brazil.

The largest church in the United States and the largest Gothic cathedral in the world is the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in Morningside Heights around the corner from Columbia University. The nearby Riverside Church was one of the benefactions of John D. Rockefeller. Its neighbor, the Union Theological Seminary, has had many distinguished theologians on its faculty, such as Henry Sloane Coffin, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich.

Many black churches in Harlem were the focus of civil rights action and the Harlem Renaissance. Manhattan is also home to Greek Orthodox churches, Chinese religions, and religious institutions of other ethnic groups. Several mosques are dotted through the boroughs, the most prominent of which is the Islamic Cultural Center on East 96th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan, financed by several Islamic members of the United Nations.

The Pope's visit coincides with the grand opening festival of an arts center inspired by the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, often referred to as the first televangelist, having hosted a twenty-year radio program, The Catholic Hour.