New York Students Prepare for a Special Visitor: Pope Francis
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- 01 Oct 2020
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Essa Nahshal is a 7-year-old from Harlem with a neatly combed side part and a Pokemon obsession, but this week video games have to compete for his attention with an unlikely visitor: the pope.
New York City will go into a virtual pope shutdown on Friday as tens of thousands are expected to gather at Central Park and Madison Square Garden to catch a glimpse of Pope Francis.
At Our Lady Queen of Angels, a Roman Catholic school in East Harlem, however, the pope is scheduled to hold an audience with a much more select group: 24 third and fourth graders from four Catholic schools.
Essa, a third grader at St. Charles Borromeo, said he did not know who the pope was until his principal told him he had been selected to meet him. “When somebody told me who he was, then I felt excited,” he said.
Essa’s family is Muslim, and his parents decided to send him and his siblings to a Catholic school because they felt it would provide their children with a better education than the public schools in their district.
“The children find the connection of how each religion is the same,” said Essa’s mother, Gina Nahshal. “He doesn’t feel that he’s different in school.”
In line with Pope Francis call to protect the environment, Essa and his classmates have made a model of an ecosystem to show the pope. “For the water I drew a fish,” Essa said. “He’s going to put it up in the Vatican .”
Emely Rodríguez, 8, lives with her family in Harlem and attends St. Paul School nearby. On Friday, she too will be among the students who will meet Francis. “I heard that he doesn’t live in a really big house because he doesn’t like fancy stuff,” she said.
Emely, whose family is from Ecuador, grew up speaking both English and Spanish. She said she was looking forward to being able to converse with the Argentine pontiff in his native tongue: “I want to tell him to pray for the poor people.”
Aaron Diaz, 8, who lives in the Bronx and attends Our Lady Queen of Angels, said, “I want to ask him if he has ever played Super Mario, because his middle name is Mario.”
“I think he cares about the earth, because it’s the only planet we can live on,” Aaron said. “Unless you like the moon.”
Essa was more concerned with the pope’s plans to get to the school on time: “I think he will take the subway because it’s faster.”
