PHILADELPHIA - People were surprised, at least the professional talkers on CNN were surprised, that Pope Francis tossed his script at the Festival of the Families Saturday night.

It’’s actually hard to gather a sense of how New Yorkers are responding to Pope Francis. Out on the street, it seems like there are no native New Yorkers. Everybody is either a tourist or part of a visiting TV crew, filing their own reports on how New Yorkers are greeting Pope Francis.

Below me the Bridgettine Sisters are chanting the office and it echoes through their guest house built into the hillside entirely out of stone, steel and tile. Outside the muezzin calls Muslims to prayer through giant loudspeakers.