Pope Francis flew over New York's Statue of Liberty and the former immigration station of Ellis Island aboard a helicopter on Saturday, in an unscheduled detour that gave him nostalgia for his home town Buenos Aires.
Flying to JFK International Airport to take a plane to Philadelphia, the pope asked the helicopter pilot to circle the landmarks, New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan said.
"You could see he was very, very moved," Dolan told reporters.
"And he said 'You know, Buenos Aires was a city of immigrants too,'" Dolan said.
The son of an Italian immigrant family and the first Latin American pope, Francis has taken up the plight of immigrants as one of the main issues of his papacy, along with climate change, economic equality and religious freedom.
On Thursday, the Argentine pontiff urged Americans in a historic speech to Congress to reject "a mindset of hostility" toward immigrants.
