'Son of immigrants': pope requests impromptu flight over Statue of Liberty

When Pope Francis left New York for Philadelphia on Saturday he took one last look at one of the city’s most famous landmarks, the Statue of Liberty.

In a spontaneous deviation from a busy schedule, as the pope left Manhattan by helicopter for JFK Airport in the borough of Queens, he asked a pilot to fly over landmarks including the statue and the former immigrant processing center at nearby Ellis Island, Reuters reported.

“You could see he [Francis] was very, very moved,” New York archbishop Timothy Dolan said. “And he said: ‘You know, Buenos Aires was a city of immigrants too.’”

The pope has said more than once during his trip to the US, which began in Washington DC after a visit to Cuba, that he is the “son of immigrants” – he was born in Argentina to Italian parents. Between 1870 and 1930, the South American country received an estimated 7 million largely Spanish and Italian immigrants.

Immigration is currently a hot-button issue in US politics, with calls from leading Republican presidential candidates including the real-estate mogul Donald Trump to deport all 11 million undocumented migrants in the country, and to build a wall along the entire southern border with Mexico.

The Statue of Liberty, gifted to the US and dedicated in 1886, is a hugely symbolic site in the history of US immigration.

Mounted on its pedestal is a poem that includes the famous words: “Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore/ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Ellis Island served as an immigration inspection station, the entry point to the US for millions of migrants, from 1892 until 1954.

Francis has made the suffering of migrants one of the main issues of his papacy, and has mentioned it several times while in the US – particularly and forcefully in his address to Congress in Washington on Thursday.

He was due to address the issue again on Saturday, in a speech at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.