Nuns move through the crowd at National park ahead of the papal mass on April 17, 2008 in Washington, DC. Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate Catholic Mass for an audience of 45,000 at the ballpark. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

With skyscrapers reaching into the sky like the spires of a secular cathedral, I dropped to a knee on 5^th Avenue as the nun lowered her head and gently kissed her prayer book. I held my breath and released the shutter. She closed the book after praying and singing with her sisters and turned her eyes back to the street in hopes of catching a glimpse of the holiest man she knows. Like tens of thousands of other Catholics, both everyday faithful and clergy alike, they had come to New York to experience and pray with Pope Benedict XVI.

When my editors offered me the opportunity to cover the pope in both Washington, DC, and New York City I gladly accepted. I knew that covering Pope Benedict XVI would be just like covering any head-of-state. There would be layers and layers of security, bureaucracy, public affairs people and hours of boredom punctuated with that one fleeting moment. All the opportunities where the press and the people were able to see the pope were staged, packaged and predictable. The pope would arrive on time, move with steady purpose from pre-marked spot to pre-marked spot. He would cruise along in the back of the Popemobile waving like an animatronic holy man behind bullet-proof glass. The uniformity of vestments and religious procedure, combined with the scale of the events, would make it all a predictable pageant. Knowing that, I decided to put energy in finding people who hoped this visit would be a holy experience. I wanted to find photographs that spoke to a beautiful combination of the personal and the public: the spiritual privacy within the public religious pageantry.

WASHINGTON - APRIL 17: Catholic priests line up in the concourse to give the faithful communion as Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass at the new Nationals Park April 17, 2008 in Washington, DC. This is the first of two Masses that the pope will say during his five-day trip to the United States including one in New York’s Yankee Stadium on Sunday, April 20. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

So, meeting the nuns from the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity from Seattle, Washington, was a blessing. They were friendly, offering me food and conversation; and humorous, snapping my photo while I took theirs. One moment the nuns circled together under Manhattan’s hovering towers and prayed. The next moment, as Pope Benedict XVI rolled by, they were screaming and hopping like 1950s Beatles fans, shouting “We love you Holy Father!” and “Viva el Papa!”

More experiences like that helped me pull back the pomp from the papal visit. In a stadium filled with 45,000 worshipers in Washington, I sought out a woman with hands clasped, head bowed in prayer. As pilgrims from around the world poured into the nation’s capitol ahead of the Pope’s arrival, I found a light moment where a boy high-fives a life-size photo of the Pope. After 60,000 people filed into the Yankee Stadium, I photographed the woman locked outside the gates, shouting for the pope to save and bless her. And, with a little luck and fleet feet, I found the subway car carrying a dozen nuns, their joyful voices singing “We are praying for Pope Benedict!”

NEW YORK - APRIL 19: A nun from the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity from Seattle, Washington, kisses her prayer book after prayer with her sisters while waiting for Pope Benedict XVI along 5th Avenue April 19, 2008 in New York City. The pope will make a historic visit to the former site of the World Trade Center and celebrate Mass in Yankee Stadium before departing New York April 20. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The “official” coverage was not without its logistical challenges, either. Call times for security sweeps were amazingly early. Buses would leave from the “media hotel” in the wee hours of the morning to carry groggy journalists to Nationals Park, Yankee Stadium, and Ground Zero. Because I cover heads-of-state in DC every day, I’m used to invasive screening applied to our bodies and our gear. Shooters not accustomed to this got a real lesson in what is public and what is private at the hands of the Secret Service. All pockets were turned out and metal removed, bags emptied, laptops had to be pulled from bags and booted up, lens caps removed, cameras turned on and shutters tripped. And, finally, a clumsy, wet-nosed K-9 stepped all over our gear, sniffing for bomb-making material and leaving a mess behind.

There was also the constant pressure of deadline. The New York Police Department informed us that no stepladders or backpacks were going to be allowed along 5^th Avenue as the pope moved up the street past thousands of adoring fans. To satisfy the 24-second news cycle and instant deadline world, Getty Images reserved a hotel room near the Pope’s route from which we could transmit images quickly. But, as with all massive and ever-shifting events on the streets of New York, I saw plenty of backpacks and more than a handful of ladders on the avenue. However, I did talk to a photographer who was threatened with arrest for opening his laptop on the street even after the pontiff had long passed.

The prayer service at Ground Zero posed a real challenge because our preset shooting position changed several times. Our original position in the pit was two stories up, 100 yards away and behind the Pope. Secret service didn’t like us there and moved us closer and in a position to see the Pope in profile. “Great!” we thought until we realized that the ceremony’s attendant would block us from seeing the Pope during most of the ceremony.

At the end of the visit, I felt my best images were of the least fortunate and most faithful. These included images of the worshippers who didn’t score the much-coveted tickets to see the Pope’s Mass, milling around outside the stadium, buying bootleg buttons and Bibles with the Pope’s image not because it was the officially sanctioned memorabilia, but because they love him. My cameras focused on the crowd that stood for hours for a chance to see the Popemobile from half a mile away simply because it carried a man, though small in stature, who carried the hope and faith of millions of people.

NEW YORK - APRIL 20: Rosa Rodriguez of Queens, New York, wears a flag with the image of Pope Benedict XVI on her head while singing and praying across the street from Yankee Stadium April 20, 2008 in the Bronx, New York. The pontiff is scheduled to celebrate Mass for about 55,000 people at the stadium. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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I wasn’t sure where exactly to go this morning. The memorial ceremony itself was held adjacent to Ground Zero, but only a handful of photographers are let in down there. So I walked in a circle for a few hours, back and forth between Broadway at the famous St. Paul’s Chapel that survived 9/11, and the plaza on the edge of Ground Zero where tourists come to peek through the fence and photograph themselves next to history.

9/11 was of course a quintessential American tragedy, and we continue to commemorate the day in American ways. A street musician blew sonorous tunes on some sort of traditional African horn, then gave out Christian tracts to those who would stop to listen. A large gang of conspiracy theorists, complete with custom T-shirts, alleged that the attacks were commissioned by the US government. A woman bowed her head next to a sign that appealed for world peace. Three young women that were identical triplets donned costumes and began a work of performing art. Cops shouted for people to move along when they lingered in a lane of traffic.

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Booming in the background while I walked around and photographed was the sounds from the memorial ceremony itself, especially the annual rite of reading all the names of those who died from the terrorist attacks. I’ve photographed this unhappy anniversary a few times before, and the names recitative still hasn’t lost it’s power; the sheer enormity of the list is more clear when you hear the names over course of four hours, sometimes seeming like it will go on forever. The names were read over a background of music, much of it Bach: the D minor partita for violin, one of the flute sonatas, others. Somehow Bach is perfectly appropriate in times of crisis across the centuries; those simple scales and chords speak to the implicit emotional truths of our lives, truths that words cannot tell.

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Although Easter is the most important festival in Christianity, it is celebrated with relatively little fanfare in the United States. In New York, the big event is the annual Easter Parade which runs up Fifth Avenue and is festive but not necessarily very spiritual. I decided instead this year to venture up to Harlem to photograph Easter service in the historic Mount Olivet Baptist Church. The neoclassical building was originally constructed as a synagogue in 1907 when German-Jewish residents moved to Harlem and the Star of David can still be seen in the ornate stained glass windows. Mount Olivet, a prominent African-American congregation in the city, later acquired the building and converted it into a church in 1925.

I was a bit worried I wouldn’t be allowed to photograph, but I showed up early and the pastor, Dr. Charles Curtis, was kind enough to acquiesce after I assured him I would be as unobtrusive as possible. The Mass began beautifully enough with hymns sung by the choir, who were seated above in the balcony, their voices gorgeously flowed down onto the assembled congregation below.

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A group of about forty tourists were packed into the back few rows of the church and Rev. Curtis eventually called out to ask where they were from. After they stated they were from Spain, Rev.Curtis said something along the lines of, “Welcome to the United States, may God bless you and keep you safe on your travels. Welcome to our church.” The Spaniards seemed genuinely moved by the hospitality and although this was no Semana Santa, I was glad to see they were able to experience something unique in the city for Easter.

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Many of the older women were decked out in fanciful Easter hats and dress, along with some of the children. As the service progressed well into its second hour, I made my way down to the front and, with a nod of approval from the pastor, was finally able to make some photographs of the women in hats singing in front. The service overall was a bit subdued compared with the more jubilant ones I’ve seen in African-American churches in the south, but it was memorable nevertheless. The church has a sacred vibe to it and the pastor’s sermon led one man to bury his head into his hands in prayer as others called out in divine joy.

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The service eventually ended somewhere in the third hour and I lingered to photograph some of the congregants who stuck around to chat and greet old friends. There are about five churches located within a few blocks of Mount Olivet and I was lucky enough to encounter a few other groups of worshipers on the street whose services also were letting out around the same time. I made some final images on the of a group of African-American children playing in front of another church in their Sunday best, an unmistakable Harlem Easter tradition.

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