See the Pope in Dublin... for just €68!
It’s set to be one of the most momentous events in our country’s history and for just €68 you can guarantee your attendance. Here we reveal...
ON Sunday, August 26, this year, all roads will lead to one venue. From early morning, on what will hopefully be a bright summer’s day, crowds will flood the pavements as they march through the capital. They will carry packed lunches and flasks of tea, fold-up chairs and cameras. As children and babies are hoisted high in the air, hawkers selling paraphernalia will line their route.
For the second time in history, Dublin’s Phoenix Park will host hundreds of thousands of worshippers, and one very special guest: the Pope. There are just under eight months to go before Ireland hosts the ninth tri-annual World Meeting of Families (WMOF). The gathering will run from August 22-26, with Pope Francis expected to attending two key events on the Saturday and the Sunday.
With the countdown on, the race to get tickets to the coveted event has officially begun. However, organisers are warning there is currently only one way to guarantee a spot to see the man himself.
‘We would encourage people to register to come to the event online immediately,’ Fr Timothy Bartlett, secretary general for the WMOF, told the Mail.
‘If they register to come to the three-day Congress, that will guarantee them tickets for the two events that the Pope himself will lead and that is the Festival of Families, likely to be in Croke Park on the Saturday night, and the final Mass, likely to be in Phoenix Park on the Sunday.’
The WMOF, first held in Rome in 1994, is a five-day event. The first three days — Pastoral Congress — will be held in the RDS and will consist of a series of talks, workshops from keynote speakers and panellists, as well as opportunities for prayer. The Festival of the Families and the closing Mass take place on days four and five.
While tickets to the Festival of the Families and the final Mass are ‘free ticketed events’, as yet there is no way of obtaining single-event tickets for either. Details of how to get these will be announced ‘in due course’.
Instead, as it stands, by paying a fee to attend the three-day Congress, attendees are guaranteed access to the free tickets for the Festival of Families and the final Mass.
The fees for the Congress vary by type of registration. Five-day adult tickets range from €68 online to €78 on the day and one-day adult tickets range from €38 online to €43 on the day. There are concessions for pensioners, ‘unwaged’ and students over 18. Tickets for children under 18 years of age are free but registration with a family group/group is required.
Although the focus is on getting people signed up for the three-day Congress, Fr Tim recognises that, as August draws nearer, Irish people are mostly likely to only want access to the weekend events with the Pope.
‘One of the most challenging issues will be ticketing for the events,’ he says. ‘With all the health and safety regulations and event licencing, we have to discuss with the relevant authorities how we will manage access to particularly an open Mass and to what extent that must be fully ticketed or not.’
In 1979, there were no tickets to the Pope’s open-air Mass. Over one million people poured into the Phoenix Park on the day, with the majority bringing their own seats. Concerns over safety and security mean this year’s final Mass may not be as easily accessed.
‘It’s too early to say what will happen,’ says Fr Tim. ‘Other parties are involved in making that decision with us including, for example, the Gardaí in terms of what the security implications might be.
‘In 1979, people could simply arrive en masse for the Mass. It’s not clear yet to what extent we will be able to facilitate that.
‘We are in discussions with the relevant authorities over that. On the one hand, we have to balance the natural desire for people to attend a Mass, which should itself, by its nature, be an open and public event. But in the circumstances we also have, with a large crowd gathering potentially, we have health and safety responsibilities and then security responsibilities.
‘Most likely, the core people who will attend and those who will be closest to the altar will definitely need tickets, but there may be some latitude in terms of people who want to come on the day. We still have to discuss that with the relevant statutory authorities and come to some shared view. In Philadelphia, where the WMOF was held last, they had a completely ticketed event and they had almost one million at their Mass.’
Despite the lack of certainty over how things will play out, organisers say all efforts will be made to ensure that everyone who wants to, has access to the events attended by the Pope.
‘At this stage you cannot access separate tickets to the two events that will be attended by the Pope,’ says Fr Tim. ‘That will happen in due course, but until then the best way of securing a place at the events that the Pope will be at is to register for the three-day Congress. In relation to families who may find it difficult to pay, if they could approach their parish and let them know that they would like to go and discreetly mention that it will be a challenge to pay. The parish can then contact us and we will do our best to facilitate.
‘We are very anxious that those who can afford to pay will make a contribution to the three-day Congress only, but that those who want to come and for whatever reason can’t are helped.’
In a bid to encourage families to ‘come as families’ to the event, Ireland will be the first host country to have children at the three-day Congress completely free of charge. In turn, they will have free access to the weekend attended by Pope Francis.
Officially, the Papal household has not confirmed a visit here by Pope Francis but it is normal protocol for this to be done closer to the time. Back at the headquarters for the WMOF in Dublin, a phone call from the Holy See is expected very soon.
‘The Pope is visiting Chile and Peru in the week of January 15 and we will expect that some time after that we will get an official announcement confirming that he is coming to be with us,’ says Fr Tim.
‘We are optimistic about such an announcement because he has consistently said that the WMOF in Ireland is a big priority for him. He personally chose us here in Ireland to host the event and he has indicated his intention and his wish to be with us for the event.’
While the only confirmed venue is the RDS for the three-day Congress, it is anticipated that Croke Park and the Phoenix Park will be confirmed after the announcement from the Holy See.
Late last year, it was revealed that the 2018 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship final will take place on Sunday, September 2, to leave Croke Park free to host the Pope. The GAA had initially planned to stage the showpiece event on August 26, but have decided to move the final to a week later to allow the stadium to be used for the Festival of Families the evening before. Practically and logistically, the Phoenix Park, the most spacious urban green space in Europe, is the only viable option for the open-air Mass.
In 1979, when the Park hosted a crowd of more than one million people, a huge altar covered by an acre of carpet and a 110-foothigh cross, which still stands, was built.
This time, sources say there will be liturgical guidelines detailing how the Pope wants the altar to be built and where he’d like his chair to be placed during services.
The Holy See will likely suggest specific hymns for the public Mass and specific church leaders to read the intercessions.
In keeping with tradition, Pope Francis is likely to stay in the Papal Nunciature on the Navan road in Dublin, but says Fr Tim, ‘this will depend where he is doing other things’.
It is not the Argentinian’s first trip to Ireland. He spent a few months with fellow Jesuits at Milltown Park in Dublin learning English in 1980.
In between engagements in Dublin, all the indications are that Pope Francis is likely to cross the border and make a visit to the North.
After his meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican in 2016, Enda Kenny said he had explained that the Irish Government would ‘co-operate and assist’ with any arrangements necessary for a northern leg to his journey. Politicians in the North have welcomed such a visit.
During the last Papal visit, John Paul II was unable to go to Northern Ireland due to fears about his
‘He personally chose us here in Ireland’
security at a time of heightened tensions during the Troubles.
The Polish Pope got as far north at Drogheda, where during an open-air Mass he called on the IRA to abandon its armed struggle — a plea the Provisionals rejected in 1979.
In the North, the Pope is likely to meet with leaders of the main political parties. It is, however, important to keep in mind that the visit will be pastoral in nature.
When a Pope visits a country, it is either a State visit — that is to say, he is primarily coming as a Head of State to visit another Head of State — or a pastoral visit, primarily to visit the local Church. A Mass is likely to feature in a trip to the North, with St Patrick’s cathedral in Armagh top of the list of suggestions for a venue.
Outside the two main WMOF events in Dublin and a visit to the North, suggestions about what other engagements or visits the Pope undertakes are speculative.
‘If he goes to other places, what he does in those places will be connected to the WMOF,’ says Fr Tim.
So where could he go? In 2012, during a visit that was closed to the public, Pope Francis met with select prisoners and their families at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Philadelphia.
A visit to a prison here, perhaps Mountjoy, has not been ruled out. With issues like homelessness and the plight of refugees close to the theme of the family, a possible trip to the Capuchin Day Centre in Dublin or a direct provision centre may also form part of the itinerary.
With the gathering less than eight months away, efforts to cover the costs involved have already begun. The first of three national collections intended to help defray the cost of hosting the WMOF in 2018 took place in parishes across the country in 2016.
This collection was followed by another national collection last year, and a final one this year.
Over the coming months, the website worldmeeting2018.ie will also facilitate those who wish to donate online through the website, and will also provide details as to how to make a bank transfer, or send a cheque or money order. The bishops have already established a National Finance Committee to provide advice on the financial planning, as a global event of this size requires a huge financial outlay on behalf of the host country.
‘Inevitably there are costs involved,’ says Fr Tim. ‘Each element — the three-day Congress, the Festival of Families, the final Mass — all have inevitable costs in terms of any event that would host a large number of people and would require preparation, planning and ticketing. Due to the fact that a lot of the elements of that have not been settled, in terms of the numbers attending, we can’t give an exact figure, but the estimated figure is somewhere in the region of €20million.
‘We are engaged in a major fundraising drive at the minute and we will do everything, not least because Pope Francis would insist we do everything we can to keep costs at a minimum. There will be no extravagance, but it will be an opportunity to celebrate and come together.
‘The Archbishop of Dublin is very mindful of keeping costs to a minimum. However, there are some inevitable costs that cannot be avoided. We are hoping that people will be generous in relation to the national collections that will take place in our churches and if people want to make individual donations that will be most welcome.’
So far, around 4,500 people from 48 different countries have registered for the three-day Congress. There have been several thousand more expressions of interest from around the world.
These figures, says Fr Tim, compare very favourably with previous host countries. A drive to recruit volunteers, of which there are currently 1,500, is ongoing, as well as a push to find host families for pilgrims wishing to attend.
With plans quietly afoot to host the first Pope to visit Ireland since Pope John Paul II, nostalgia is in abundance. Times were hard in the Ireland of September 1979 — the economy was a mess and the Troubles cast a long shadow.
But for three magical days, the Papal visit lifted the country.
While it is hard not to look back on that momentous day and all that came with it, organisers are keen to stress that this year’s event, in particular numbers who will attend, cannot be compared.
‘People might be surprised to hear me say that we genuinely are giving no particular consideration to comparison and to numbers,’ says Fr Tim.
‘Our country has changed, but also how people engage with a large event like this has changed. There will be many people, in a way that they wouldn’t have had the opportunity or ability to in 1979, who will watch it on TV, follow it through social media and in that sense, be present and engaged with it, rather than being physically present at the event itself.
‘We will do our best to respond to those who want to be phsyically present. It will be, by any standards, and whatever the numbers, a memorable and historic moment, not only for the Church in Ireland, but for our country.
‘It will put Ireland once again on international stage.’
‘The estimated cost is about €20million’ ‘It will be an opportunity to celebrate’