COMMENTARY: Loving service is our responsibility, and liberty our right.
The parades, concerts, cookouts and fireworks displays in communities throughout the United States of America last month marked our country’s 250th birthday with great excitement and gratitude.
In Philadelphia, also known as “the Birthplace of America,” we were blessed to see so much joy in the faces and voices of all the wonderful people who gathered to celebrate on the July 4 weekend. We were all overjoyed to see our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV receive the 2026 Liberty Medal bestowed on him by the National Constitution Center. It was an amazing ceremony televised locally for all to witness, as we heard directly from him in live remarks from the Vatican.
In our own Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul at the start of the celebration of Mass attended by 2,500 people the following day, the Holy Father was gracious enough to send us a video message that deeply touched our hearts.
Following the Mass, we concluded the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage as we adored the Blessed Sacrament carried in a street procession from saint to saint — from the archdiocesan Shrine of Saint Katharine Drexel at the Cathedral
