Security for Pope Francis: Mayor of Rome promises to help Philadelphia

ROME - Philadelphia's security preparations for Pope Francis' 48-hour visit have been going on for more than a year. For Ignazio Marino, mayor of Rome, papal security is an everyday issue.

"It's pretty tough because the pope is a terrific person, he attracts millions of people, so traffic and security is a huge, huge issue - particularly in these days and time with possibility of terroristic attacks, we are always concerned," Marino said Thursday outside his office in Rome.

The final day of the Philadelphia delegation's trip to Rome focused largely on getting input from Roman and Vatican City authorities on security and infrastructure for large-scale events featuring the pope. A separate news conference discussed the programming for the World Meeting of Families.

Marino, elected in 2013, calls Philadelphia his second home. Before returning to Italy, he worked as a transplant surgeon from 2003-2006 at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he gave a commencement speech this year. He said Philadelphia's plans were in good shape for the visit, which he will also attend.

"We will provide them with a book of things we prepared, and we are entirely at the disposal of Philadelphia to help," he said. "I've seen they've done, already, everything."

Marino - who used to live at Second and Spruce Streets in Philadelphia - gave Mayor Nutter a statue of the Capitoline She-wolf, the ancient symbol of Rome. Nutter gave Marino a desktop replica of the Liberty Bell. The two then met behind closed doors with security officials from both cities.

Later in the day Nutter met with Gen. Domenico Giani, head of Vatican police, in another private sit-down.

Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan, who heads the Philadelphia Police Homeland Security and Counter-Terrorism unit, said Philadelphia would have all agencies and resources at its disposal.

Still, he said, it is nerve-racking to prepare for an estimated 1.5 million people and a popular pope who likes to wander into swelling crowds.

"It's quite a responsibility. Trust me," Sullivan said. "It keeps me up at night. It occupies the majority of my waking hours, thinking of the different possibilities, but that's part of the planning process, thinking about what are the vulnerabilities and how can we best counter them."

Sullivan, who had never been to Europe before this trip, said that talking with officials here made him confident in the city's security plan.

Samantha Phillips, director of emergency management for the city, said she was preparing for any and all infrastructure problems and working with city departments to set up contingency plans.

"We had two major water-main breaks in a span of four days two weeks ago - major water-main breaks - and there's no reason we shouldn't plan for that to happen that weekend in Center City," she said.

"So what is the process . . . ? How do we quickly get the right resources in to isolate that and try to do a more substantial repair overnight? It gets logistically complicated when you have two million people in a highly condensed area."

She said there were plans for base camps, just in case. "Like you'd do at a disaster zone, to have forward-leaning equipment and personnel ready."

The job also has its lighter moments, such as determining whether certain gadgets will be allowed at the papal events.

"The ruling is no selfie-sticks, no sticks of any kind," she said.

One challenge for this event, Phillips said, is that the World Meeting tends to attract an older crowd that will be expected to do a lot of walking. That's a very different population from Made in America and many of the larger concerts held on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

"The pope will have so many people focused on him. For my perspective - while I certainly care about the pope - my job is to care about the other people who we might not have as close an eye on.

"How do we get people out to hospitals? Out to medical stations? How do we make sure we don't have a tremendous number of dehydration cases? It's all about providing the right logistics at the right places and speculating where the largest crowds will be."