Get your free tickets for biggest gig of the summer...
TICKETS for Pope Francis’s eagerly awaited visit to Knock, Co. Mayo, and Dublin’s Phoenix Park go up for grabs on Monday.
As many as 45,000 free tickets are available for the Pope’s visit to Knock Shrine on the morning of Sunday, August 26. A further 500,000 free tickets have been allocated for the closfor ing Mass of the World Meeting of Families at the Phoenix Park later that day.
The organisers stressed yesterday it will not be possible for the public to attend both events due to the distance involved and the travel restrictions in place.
They have stressed that tickets have to be booked at worldmeeting2018.ie from Monday. They said admission will not be possible without a ticket.
Fr Timothy Bartlett, the secretary-general of the World Meetings of Families, said a lot of work was going into ensuring the events ran as smoothly as possible.
He said: ‘We’re encouraging people to plan their journey, notably Phoenix Park. A lot of work and effort is going into the planning of this. We’re all working hard to make this as joyful and comfortable an experience as possible for all those who want to attend.’
Anyone who is registering for the Knock event will have their ticket issued to them but pilgrims attending the event in Phoenix Park are being asked to print out their tickets at home and take it with them to the event.
Fr Bartlett told RTÉ’s Today With Seán O’Rourke: ‘The fairest way of doing this is simply to make the tickets available online and it is really up to people then to register their interest and that will be by and large on a first come-first serve basis.’
He acknowledged the online booking system could prove troublesome for some people but said they should ask for help at their local church.
The priest said: ‘What we are asking people who, for whatever reason, don’t have easy access to the online system is to approach their parish and ask for some support in making that application.’
Due to a traffic exclusion zone, worshippers attending the event in Phoenix Park face a walk of between 2km and 5km – and could face a wait of up to five hours to leave the park afterwards.
Fr Bartlett said: ‘You can take your time.
‘You can have a cup of tea before you move on. So it will be relaxed, it will be comfortable – or as comfortable as we can humanly make it.’
Speaking in terms of the wait times, Fr Bartlett said that the estimate of a five-hour wait was the maximum.
He said: ‘I assure people that even if they are waiting so that we can do this in an orderly and organised way there will still be lots of activity and entertainment around as part of the whole experience.’
The World Meeting of Families yesterday played down concerns that ticket touts would try to sell on tickets for the events.
A spokeswoman said: ‘We are saying to people if you are approached and offered a ticket for sale – all of the tickets for Pope Francis in Ireland are free of charge, nobody should be paying for tickets – and we are saying, if that happens please let us know but please more importantly let the gardaí know.
‘Anybody who books any single one of the 500,000 tickets that we are going to put to the market on Monday will have to have given us an email address and we are using that email address to make contact with people. We will be pushing out more information about details of the Mass or public health and safety information.’
Tickets for the Knock Shrine event will be printed with the individual’s name on it and will not be transferrable while the tickets of the Phoenix Park event will only be transferrable within a group booking.
‘First come first served basis’ ‘Report ticket touts to the gardaí’
TICKETS for the Phoenix Park Mass to be celebrated in August by Pope Francis go on sale on Monday, and 500,000 worshippers are expected to attend, while tickets for his Croke Park centrepiece address during the World Meeting of Families are already all gone.
The Rolling Stones, Ed Sheeran, Billy Joel, Michael Bublé, Taylor Swift and other international superstars might have proved their popularity with fans this year but the 81-year-old Pontiff remains the biggest draw of all.