Contributed Photo by Emma Seidl EMMA SEIDEL, VICE-PRESIDENT of the St. Patrick's-Holy Cross CYO group from Callicoon, got close enough to His Holines, Pope Benedict XVI, to snap this photograph at the Pope's rally for youth in Yonkers on Saturday. Visible at left is the Archbishop of the New York Diocese - which includes Sullivan County - Edward Cardinal Egan.

CYO groups visit Pope at youth rally

By Fred Stabbert III
YONKERS — Emma Seidl was still glowing the day after she saw Pope Benedict XVI at a youth rally outside St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodee.
Joined by nearly 20,000 other youths from the Tri-state area, two local Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) groups boarded a bus in Monticello early Saturday morning to get to Yonkers on time.
“It was beautiful actually,” Emma, the vice president of the St. Patrick’s-Holy Cross CYO group from Callicoon, said. “It was inspiring to see so many young people.”
Emma loved the way the Pope spoke to everyone and especially the way he embraced the disabled children.
“At the beginning [of the rally] he talked and touched the disabled children,” she said. “He does resemble Jesus Christ on earth.
“He talked about vocations,” she said. “I will never forget it. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Joining Emma was her mother Laura, who chaperoned the group.
Also her sister Olivia and brother Colin as well as Leeann Rhodes, Brittany Milk, Cory Rake and Amanda Rosenberger.
Chaperoning the St. George’s-St. Francis CYO were Bill Moloney and Sue Peters.
“We took down nine religious ed students and they all got to see the Pope up close as he went by in the Popemobile,” Moloney said.
Emma, who is a 14-year-old eighth grader at Sullivan West, squeezed her way up front “through all the priests” with Amanda Rosenberger and Brittany Milk.
When she got up there “a priest put me on his shoulders,” she said. “It was so nice of him to ask me, so kind.”
Emma is the daughter of Joe and Laura Seidl of Cochecton.