The scene on Fifth Avenue

The scene at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 51st Street: Overhead, a hovering helicopter. On every rooftop, a battery of snipers. Along the streets, metal barricades, and an amazing array of law enforcement with bullhorns, dogs, earpieces, and a variety of weaponry. No cars on one of the busiest arteries in Manhattan. Just a sea of people, many of them waiting for hours and hours, hoping to catch a fleeting glimpse of Pope Benedict XVI.

That's what I encountered when I emerged at midday from the Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral -- a sort of eerie anticipatory calm, with no traffic, no kiosks, just a long stretch of Catholics waiting to wave their Vatican flags and their pre-printed signs, "Welcome Benedict XVI.''

I watched the popemobile from the cathedral steps, alongside a group of priests and nuns who had attended the Mass inside, and although the pope-parade was brief, there was no missing it. First there was the huge roar of 30 motorcycles. Then there was the scream of people who realized the pope must be coming. Then some youngsters started chanting his Italian nickname, "Benedetto! Benedetto!" A 20-year-old woman standing in front of me, Sisan Walker of Miami, started repeating, "Oh my God! There he is! Oh my God!" She was so excited she couldn't hold up the piece of pink cardboard on which she had scrawled, "We (heart) Benedict XVI'' in magic marker - instead she handed it to a nearby priest who started waving it in the air. Walker and her friend, Doriana Vega, 22, of Mexico, had travelled to New York just to glimpse the pope from a sidewalk -- they had no tickets to the Mass today or tomorrow -- so they had arrived at 5:30 a.m. and waited 8 hours to watch him drive by.

The motorcycles were followed by a few police cruisers. And then came the white popemobile, surrounded by a huge number of police, Secret Service, and who knows what other kinds of law enforcement, some on foot and some in black limos, black SUVs and black vans. The popemobile, manufactured by Mercedes-Benz, looks kind of like a pick-up truck with a giant, bulletproof, rectangular glass bubble sitting on the truckbed.

Inside the glass was the pope, Benedict XVI, smiling and waving, as well as his ever-present personal secretary, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, who has become a bit of a heartthrob in the Catholic blogosphere, and the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Edward M. Egan.

The popemobile drove slowly past the Banana Republic and Faconnable stores that are across from the cathedral in Rockefeller Center, and then, the glass-enclosed pontiff passed the H&M on the next block, receded from sight, his movement followed by a sea of human arms, holding cameras and cellphones in the air, tracing the arc of the pope's path uptown.

By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff

For all the blog posts on the papal visit, go here.

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