October 3, 1979: An ebullient pontiff, thrown a ticker-tape parade by overjoyed New Yorkers, was shielded from the rain by an umbrella held by Terence Cardinal Cooke, the Archbishop of New York. At a gathering at Madison Square Garden, Pope John Paul II was cheered by thousands of teenagers. “If he’d put that guitar around his neck,” said one headmaster of a Catholic high school, “the kids would have blown the roof right off the Garden.”
