WASHINGTON — For most Catholics, next month’s papal visit is an opportunity to celebrate and reflect. For Deacon Dave Cahoon, it’s all that — but it’s also a deadline.
Cahoon runs St. Joseph’s Carpentry Shop, in Poolesville, Maryland, and he’s one of a crew of 12 making the furniture for Pope Francis’ canonization mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, set for Sept. 23. They need 16 pieces, from the pope’s chair to the altar and more.
He told the Catholic News Service that he also built the altar for Pope Benedict XVI’s mass at Nationals Park in 2008.
“It’s just by the grace of God” that he got the job for a second papal visit.
It’s a big job.
“I’m on pure adrenaline,” he told CNS, but the Pope will get nothing less than his and his team’s best.
When your father is visiting, he tells WTOP, “You bring out the good china.”
Cahoon says he’s using locally sourced wood for the process, explaining that after Francis’ recent call to take better care of the Earth.
“We couldn’t really go ahead and make it out of mahogany that came out of the South American rain forest.”
It will all be reused at the basilica after the outdoor mass.
WTOP’s Andrew Mollenbeck contributed to this report.
