Ensuring Separation Of Church, State

National Memo

Ensuring Separation Of Church, State
By Julia Terruso, The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)

PHILADELPHIA — M. Kelly Tillery was a 24-year-old recent Penn law graduate in September 1979 when he heard Mayor Frank Rizzo announce on the evening news that he would build a huge cylindrical platform atop Logan Square, for Pope John Paul II to say Mass.

Tillery couldn’t believe what he was hearing. By funding the platform for a Mass, Rizzo wasn’t separating church and state — he was marrying them.

Tillery stayed up all night drafting a federal lawsuit against Philadelphia over what he considered its blatant violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

“I had just read every First Amendment Supreme Court case ever issued,” Tillery, now 60, said. “I could not believe a mayor of a modern American city would have the audacity to say something so clearly unconstitutional. He basically said, ‘I’m going to build an outdoor church for my pope.'”

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Tillery, now a partner at Pepper Hamilton L.L.P. specializing in intellectual property law, is still known by friends as “the man who sued the pope.” That’s not quite accurate — he passed the case on to the American Civil Liberties Union — but his story reaffirms some of the reasons September’s visit by Pope Francis will not come at taxpayers’ expense.

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