BALTIMORE – November 12, 2007 — Pope Benedict XVI will travel to the United States for the first time as pontiff next year to meet with President Bush, address the United Nations and visit ground zero, a Vatican official told American bishops Monday.

Benedict will visit only Washington and New York during his April 15-20 trip, despite invitations from bishops elsewhere around the country.

He will celebrate public Mass at the new Nationals Park stadium in Washington and at Yankee Stadium, according to Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican ambassador to the United States.

                                                                
The pope also will convene separate national meetings with leaders of other faiths, with Roman Catholic priests, Catholic university presidents and diocesan religious educators.

Benedict has dedicated his pontificate to fighting secularism and strengthening Catholic identity. Tradition-minded American Catholics have long complained that Catholic universities have lost their religious identity.

The visit coincides with the third anniversary of Benedict’s election to succeed Pope John Paul II on April 19, 2005.

John Paul’s five visits to the United States during his pontificate were major events. When he arrived at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1979, a school band welcomed him with the theme from “Rocky.” The late pontiff’s charisma and personal warmth attracted tens of thousands of people to his appearances and buoyed the American church.

Benedict, a theologian, spent more than two decades as the Vatican’s chief orthodoxy watchdog before becoming pope, earning a reputation – considered unfair by his supporters – as a dour enforcer of Catholic teaching.

“I don’t think he is going to make the sort of impact John Paul did. Benedict can’t do it and doesn’t want to do it,” said James Hitchcock, a Catholic historian from St. Louis University. “I think it’s a very different kind of appeal.”

The visit comes as the 67 million-member American church is grappling with a priest shortage and lack of observance among many Catholics, and is still recovering from the clergy sex abuse crisis. American dioceses have paid more than $2 billion in settlements with victims since 1950.

Benedict will also be in the United States during a presidential election year, and his public events could inadvertently become public relations vehicles for candidates or political parties.

Benedict’s pilgrimage to the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York is meant to show “solidarity with those who have died, with their families and with all those who wish an end of violence and in the search of peace,” Sambi said.

However, the site also has become linked in the public mind with former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

Giuliani, a Catholic, has been married three times and supports abortion rights, and St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke has said he would deny Holy Communion to the candidate.

Chris Duncan, chairman of the political science department at the University of Dayton, a Marianist school in Ohio, said the ground zero visit could hurt Giuliani’s relations with the Republican Party’s important conservative Christian base by “calling specific attention to the fact that he’s living well outside of the faith.”

Joe Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, said he knows of no presidential candidates who have asked to accompany the pope to ground zero.

The pope’s visit will begin with an April 16 reception with Bush at the White House, followed the next day by Mass at the new National Park and separate meetings with Catholic educators and leaders of other faiths.

Bush met the pope for the first time in June, at the Vatican.

The president used that occasion to defend his humanitarian record to the pope, who expressed concern about “the worrisome situation in Iraq.”

“President and Mrs. Bush are honored to welcome His Holiness to the White House next April,” said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for President Bush.

On April 18, the pope will address the United Nations, then meet with priests and members of religious orders the next day. On April 20, he will visit ground zero and lead the Yankee Stadium Mass before leaving the country.

Sambi announced the plan at the start of a three-day meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Bishop William Skylstad, president of the bishops’ conference, said the Vatican limited the visit to the two cities to “conserve (Benedict’s) energy.”

Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved