The Vatican has just posted the missal for the prayers at different events in Pope Benedict’s U.S. visit from April 15 to 20. We’ve covered the prayer at Ground Zero as a news story here. Now here’s the link for the PDF of the rest of the missal. The Vatican usually distributes small missals with the prayers for Masses and other services during papal trips (and major events at St. Peter’s). This is the first time we’ve seen the prayers posted in advance on the Internet.

Almost all the prayers are in English. There is very little Latin (despite what some people were suggesting). The Creed will be in Latin at the Yankee Stadium Mass, starting with Benedict chanting Credo in unum Deum and then all reading out Patrem omnipotentem, factorem cæli et terræ…

The bishops will have a lot of Latin in their meeting with Benedict on April 16 — including the Magnificat, Pater Noster and Regina Cæli — but the seminarians have none in their meeting on the 19th (don’t they learn Latin too?).

There will be readings in Spanish at the Masses in Nationals Park, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Yankee Stadium. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has the full itinerary here .

Nota bene: These are not the sermons or speeches the pope will deliver during the visit, so there is nothing in here about what he will tell the Catholic educators or the United Nations. For that, you’ll probably have to wait until he actually delivers them.

PS: I’m not sure this missal was supposed to be posted like this. The link to it is live on the Italian-language website about the pope’s visit (under Messale per il Viaggio Apostolico [Inglese], but not on the English-language one. If it disappears from the Italian site, we’ll know this was un errore.

UPDATE: The link is live now on the English-language site. So no mistake after all!