The “Immaculate Reception” turns 50 this Friday, Dec. 23
Immaculate Reception Impact Football
“Dec. 23 will henceforth be celebrated in Pittsburgh as the Feast of the Immaculate Reception,” legendary local sportscaster Myron Cope proclaimed. By 1980, just as the Steelers were celebrating their fourth Super Bowl victory, Pittsburgh’s famed steel industry was moving from decline to all-out collapse. Many young people moved out of the demoralized region in search of jobs across the country .
The city's and region's population decreased in the years after the catch. The ranks of Catholics — 40% of the region's population in 1972 — dropped by about a third. Many ethnic and other parishes have closed or merged, and often merged again. A church named for the Immaculate Conception recently closed.But the mythology of the Immaculate Reception endures.
And as with the Immaculate Reception, people have been putting themselves in Harris' cleats since they first poured onto the field in 1972, joining him in an end zone celebration.It’s hardly the only Catholic connection to the Steelers. “There was nobody more Catholic than the Chief,” Vallone said of the team's legendary founder, Art Rooney. And for decades, the team has practiced at St. Vincent College, a nearby Catholic school and home to a Benedictine abbey.
“Touchdown Jesus,” a large mural of Christ with his arms raised, is a landmark near the stadium of Notre Dame University, the Catholic school that long ago fielded the apocalyptic backfield, the Four Horsemen.
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