The Unique Catholic History at Yankee Stadium
*This article was originally published by RealClear Religion
Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park, located in deep center field, is a baseball shrine. Only the best Yankee legends in the team’s century-plus existence are immortalized with bronze plaques, players like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and, more recently, Derek Jeter. To emphasize the park’s exclusivity, there are fewer Yankees honored in Monument Park than in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Weaving through the exhibit, baseball fans young and old can reflect on the game’s giants, whose on-field heroics not only clinched 27 World Series titles for the ballclub, but also helped grow the sport.
Yet within Monument Park’s confines are several non-baseball affiliated plaques honoring the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Nelson Mandela and Jackie Robinson; but there are also three plaques dedicating when the hallowed grounds of one of baseball’s greatest stadiums transformed into the hallowed grounds for celebrating Catholic Mass: Pope Paul VI in 1965; Pope John Paul II in 1979; and Pope Benedict XVI in 2008.
On Oct. 4, 1964, Pope Paul VI celebrated one of the most significant Masses in the 20th century — and the first Mass on American soil celebrated by a pontiff. More than 90,000 worshippers, the largest crowd in Yankee Stadium’s history up to that point and well-beyond the 67,000 seating capacity, joined the Holy Father, who stressed in his homily to love peace, serve the cause of peace and base peace on “moral and religious principles.”
The papal Mass was a momentous occasion that the Knights of Columbus (K of C), the largest Catholic fraternal organization in the world, sought to commemorate it at Yankee Stadium. Therefore, on June 25, 1966, as part of Knights of Columbus Day at the ballpark, the K of C dedicated a plaque honoring the Holy Father’s visit with the approval of Yankee management and the Archdiocese of New York. At the time, then-Supreme Knight John McDevitt affirmed the significance of the plaque’s location, stating:
“It is the fervent hope of our association of 1,200,000 Catholic men that in the years ahead this plaque will remind the millions who will visit this stadium of the stirring beauty of the night that the Pope prayed here and even more impress on them the serious purpose of that prayer — to emphasize that the place of charity, like God, is everywhere.”
The K of C already had significant ties to Yankee Stadium. When the ballpark held its inaugural Opening Day on April 18, 1923, New York Gov. Al Smith — a Knight of Columbus — threw out the first pitch. Even Babe Ruth, who effectively financed the new ballfield due to his homerun hitting prowess (thus the park being dubbed “The House that Ruth Built”), was a Knight.
However, by December 1953, team owners Dan Topping and Del Webb were looking to sell the stadium and it was around this time that the K of C — under the leadership of Supreme Knight Luke Hart — was searching for new investment opportunities, particularly in real estate. According to Hart, he first heard about the opportunity to buy Yankee Stadium from “Supreme Treasurer [Francis] Heazel, who was a friend of some of the people involved.”
The opportunity was too good to balk at.
In a stunning move, the stadium and property were purchased from financier Arnold Johnson as part of a leaseback investment — the K of C bought the real estate (i.e., the land on which Yankee Stadium stood) then leased it back to Johnson, who then, in turn, leased the stadium to the Yankees. Supreme Knight Hart wrote in his diary about the purchase:
“We all met in the Board Room at the Banker’s Trust Company in Rockefeller Center. …The various documents incident to the Yankee deal were executed and I delivered a check for $2,500,000. …It was of course, the largest check I ever signed.”
Hart explained the rationale behind the purchase of the land at Yankee Stadium as not only an investment opportunity, but as a way of furthering the mission of the K of C’s founder, Father Michael McGivney, who is on the path to sainthood. As Hart wrote in a letter to Knights in the January 1954 Columbia, the K of C’s magazine:
“The publicity incident to this transaction has accomplished two important results: First, it has strikingly made known to the world the fact that our Order has attained a stature that makes it worthy of consideration. Second, it emphasized the fact that the definite plan and purpose of our founder has been religiously adhered to. Because of the publicity attaching to this transaction many citizens have been aroused to an awareness of the Knights of Columbus who, until then, were not fully conscious of its existence, or, if they were conscious of its existence, had no realization of its importance. Now they know that the Order has risen to a position in the affairs of men that commands attention. In addition, this transaction gives emphasis to the fact that, in keeping with Father McGivney’s resolve that there should be a fraternity of Catholic men that would make provision for their widows and orphans at the time of their distress, the organization which he founded has carefully, day in and day out, year in and year out, kept faith with his resolution by accumulating the moneys requisite to that great objective.”
From 1954 to 1971, the K of C owned the land on which the House of Ruth stood. During that time, the Yankees were a perennial powerhouse behind the bats of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, the glove of Yogi Berra and the pitching of Whitey Ford, appearing in the World Series nine times and winning four. One of the most significant years came in 1961 when Mantle and Maris pursued Ruth’s single-season home run record of 60 — which Maris broke, notching 61 (which was later broken by another Yankee, Aaron Judge in 2022).
However, the K of C eventually relinquished the rights to Yankee Stadium’s field when the city of New York, under Mayor John Lindsay, purchased it in 1971. Of the eighteen real estate investments made during Hart’s term, the Yankee Stadium deal was the most significant.
Yet this is not where the story ends.
During his first papal visit to the United States, Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass at Yankee Stadium, Oct. 2, 1979, with a crowd of 80,000 faithful — the largest at the ballfield since Pope Paul VI’s visit nearly 14 years earlier. In his homily, the future saint emphasized charity toward the poor, who were “many in your own midst,” and on keeping the parable of the rich man and Lazarus “present in our memory; it must form our conscience.”
The next papal Mass at “The House that Ruth Built” happened nearly three decades later, when Pope Benedict XVI toured the United States for six days where he “addressed world issues, visited a synagogue and voiced deep shame over the child sexual abuse scandal that has damaged the church’s standing in many American dioceses,” according to a contemporary report by The New York Times. Prior to Mass on April 20, 2008, the final day of his apostolic trip, the Holy Father visited Ground Zero, praying for the victims and world peace. After the more somber morning, Pope Benedict XVI journeyed to the Bronx, and celebrated Mass with nearly 60,000 people, the largest public event of his visit. His message to attendees, and the American faithful watching, was to pray “fervently for the coming of the Kingdom [of God],” while also “facing the challenges of present and future with confidence in Christ’s victory and a commitment to extending his reign” and “not losing heart in the face of resistance, adversity and scandal.”
This was not only the final Mass at a ballpark by a pontiff, but the final at the old Yankee Stadium before the new one opened in 2009.
Nevertheless, like the organization did to honor Pope Paul VI’s visit, the K of C also commemorated the papal Masses of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Today, all three plaques are exhibited in Monument Park. While other ballfields have held papal Masses — including Dodgers Stadium, Shea Stadium and Nationals Park — none have had more than Yankee Stadium and no other park may have been owned by a Catholic organization.