Student journalists from Duquesne University have produced a documentary about the April visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the U.S., which they hope will allow viewers to experience the feeling of being there.

"They captured the excitement that surrounded Pope Benedict's visit. What the Holy Father did for the people is realized through their work," said Msgr. Edward Burns, rector of St. Paul Seminary in East Carnegie, who attended many of the papal events. He was among 150 people, including Bishop David Zubik of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, who attended yesterday's campus debut of "Christ our hope -- Pilgrimage of the pope."

The 52-minute film intersperses clips from the pope's talks with on-the-street interviews of people expressing their hopes for his visit.

Among its most moving moments are interviews with survivors of 9/11 at Ground Zero, explaining what it meant to have the pope bless the ground where some bodies will never be recovered.

Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., adds perspective. He was Pittsburgh's longtime bishop and the person responsible for making the Duquesne crew the only student journalists among 5,000 reporters credentialed for the visit.

Getting in places where they were credentialed was difficult enough -- requiring hours of daily security checks. But for New York they lacked credentials and had to try to crash larger events by blending in with the crowd, said Brad Libis, a senior from Cincinnati, who found logistics the biggest challenge of the project.

There were happy surprises. Stacy Gault, a graduate student from Whitehall, thought she was assigned a terrible camera position in Washington's Nationals Park, only to have the pope walk right by.

"There was so much pressure to get that shot, and people pushing behind you," she said of footage that looks like the pope reaching toward her camera.

The idea for the project came from Mike Clark, an anchor at WTAE-TV and adjunct professor in Duquesne's department of journalism and multimedia arts. The student crews were supervised by Dennis Woytek, an assistant professor.

"There aren't many times that faculty get a chance to accompany students and work side by side with them on a project such as this. They showed themselves as professionals," Mr. Woytek said.

The documentary was produced for the student channel DUQ-TV. DVDs will be sold but details, including price, have not been set. To be put on a contact list for obtaining the DVD, send an e-mail to jma@duq.edu.