When Pope Francis lands in New York City on Sept. 24 for a whirlwind 39-hour visit, he will go to Manhattan’s centers of power and to its periphery. His public schedule includes both the United Nations to address the General Assembly and an East Harlem school to meet with immigrant students and day laborers.

This juxtaposition is in keeping not only with the pope’s emphasis on serving those at society’s margins, but also with the history of Roman Catholics in New York City.

A community that began as a persecuted minority in the colonial city grew to make up nearly half of all New Yorkers by the end of the Civil War. As the number of Catholics grew, so did their stature. Faced with nativist anti-Catholic fervor in the 19th century, this multilingual, multinational underclass built its own educational and social welfare institutions, eventually becoming an entrenched part of New York’s secular power structure, populating ranks of its police department and City Hall for generations.