Pope Francis begins his historic visit to Washington, New York and Philadelphia Sept. 22, culminating with his open-air Mass in Philadelphia that is expected to draw in excess of 1 million pilgrims.

Thanks to your generosity, EWTN and the Register will be right there every step of the way. We will have teams of reporters in each city the Holy Father will visit, and we will be at nearly all of his personal appearances.

What will the Holy Father find here? It wasn’t that long ago when the mainstream media was certain that when Pope John Paul II arrived in Denver for World Youth Day 1993, he and his Church would see how irrelevant it had become in this modern era. They could not have been more wrong.

I believe Pope Francis will see a Church full of people of all walks of life who want to increasingly know and love Christ and his Church — people who want to serve Jesus and the visible institution he founded.

As has been his custom, Pope Francis will seek to push the politics aside and radiate Christ to everyone he comes into contact with. But that won’t stop people from trying to score political points by compartmentalizing his words and actions. Stay tuned to the Register, EWTN News Nightly, Catholic News Agency and The World Over to get the straight scoop on what is really happening in these groundbreaking events.

We need to pray for Pope Francis, a missionary of mercy, so that, in preaching the Gospel, he touches the hearts and minds of the lost in our country and in the world.

God bless you!