Benedict XVI will visit New York in April for his first time as the pope, making stops at Yankee Stadium, the United Nations, and ground zero, the Vatican’s ambassador to America announced yesterday.

It will be the fourth time a pope has visited New York City, and the city’s millions of Catholics are already eagerly preparing for the festivities.

“The response of all was both rejoicing and thanksgiving to the Lord for the great grace of the presence of the successor of St. Peter in our midst,” Edward Cardinal Egan of New York said in a statement.

“We’re thrilled he’s going to be here,” a spokeswoman for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, based in New York, Kiera McCaffrey, said.

The New York Archdiocese spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, called the visit “unprecedented and unparalleled” for New York, which he said has had more papal visits than “anywhere else in the country.”

Brooklyn and Queens congregants are planning to hold a ceremony to greet the pope at John F. Kennedy International Airport, where he will arrive April 18, after visiting Washington.

“We’re delighted to know that he’s coming,” a spokesman for the Brooklyn Archdiocese, Frank DeRosa, said.

A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, John Gallagher, said the city was honored to host the pontiff.

“We’re looking forward to what we know will be a remarkable and historic occasion for millions of the City’s Catholics and New Yorkers of all faiths,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

The city’s last papal visit was in 1995, when Pope John Paul II held a mass for more than 100,000 people in Central Park. Mayor Bloomberg has since restricted large gatherings there to protect the Great Lawn’s grass, so Pope Benedict XVI will preside over a public mass in Yankee Stadium. It would be the third time Yankee Stadium, which can hold close to 60,000 people, hosts a pope.

Mr. Zwilling said the archdiocese would announce procedures for ticketing for the event before April.

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Washington D.C. on April 15, the third anniversary of his accession to the papacy, and leaves from New York on April 20. In Washington, he will meet with President Bush, who has visited him at the Vatican in the past. He will deliver his U.N. speech on his first day in New York, April 18, and give a mass for clergy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on his last day here.

More than the usual commotion may greet the new pontiff, who has been working recently to mend relations with other religious communities.

The pope arrives shortly after Easter, when for the first time in decades many Catholics churches around the world will hold a traditional mass that includes a prayer calling for Jews to convert to Catholicism. Pope Benedict XVI revived the Latin Tridentine mass last summer, to the dismay of many Jewish groups.

Before the pope visits the city, some members of those groups said they hoped he will have reversed his decision to include the prayer for Jews, which calls on God to “remove the veil from their hearts.”

“We at the ADL are hoping that Pope Benedict XVI will have already addressed and resolved the issue of the offensive Good Friday prayer to convert Jews,” the director of Interfaith Policy for the Anti-Defamation League, Rabbi Eric Greenberg, said. He also called the pope’s visit “historic and special.”

If he hasn’t, Mr. Greenberg suggested the dispute over the prayer could give religious leaders something to talk about when they meet with the pope in Washington D.C. before he comes to New York.

The pope also upset Muslim leaders last year after quoting a 14th century emperor who called Islam “evil.” He met last week with the king of Saudi Arabia in what many considered an effort to ease tensions.

In New York, he will meet only with Christian leaders because his visit corresponds with the beginning of Passover, which would be inconvenient for Jewish leaders here, Mr. Zwilling said.

An adviser to Catholic bishops on Jewish-Catholic relations, Philip Cunningham, said the pope’s trip to ground zero — a place he called symbolic of “all the inter-religious tensions” — and the pope’s speech at the U.N., would also be watched closely for their possible impact on interfaith relations.

“His speech at the U.N. has the potential to have a lot of significance in promoting inter-religious cooperation,” Mr. Cunningham said. “It could be important.”

At ground zero, he will be meeting with families of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The visit is aimed to express the pope’s “solidarity with those who have died, with their families and with all those who wish to end violence and in the search of peace,” the Vatican’s ambassador to America, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, told the Associated Press yesterday.