‘Double-cross’ as free pope tix resold
Free tickets to Pope Francis’ procession through Central Park on Sept. 25 are being hawked online for as much as $3,000 a pair.
“Once in a lifetime — see Pope Francis,” proclaimed one sinful seller on Craigslist. Price: $2,500.
“Willing to sell both for $3,000,” read another ad, one of at least 20 flooding the Web site by Friday afternoon, just a day after the first ducats were emailed to the flock.
Church officials are urging resellers to repent.
“It certainly goes against everything that Pope Francis stands for,” fumed Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York.
About 93,000 New Yorkers applied for the 40,000 pairs of tickets for the procession, where the pontiff will ride the popemobile through the park, greeting New Yorkers between 60th and 72nd streets at around 5 p.m.
He will then say Mass at Madi son Square Garden at 6 p.m., but those tickets are being distributed through parishes.
The city began notifying lucky winners of the park tickets on Thursday and will continue sending notifications through Monday.
The free tickets were simply emailed in a PDF to winners, with no ID required, making them particularly easy to sell.
“I can forward you the email and you can put the information in and have the tickets directly e mailed to you!” proclaimed one ad, pricing tickets at $200 each.
Sellers and their crass ads began to multiply like loaves and fishes.
“I won 2 tickets to see the Pope in NYC,” said one Craigslist scalper, offering the pair for $1,000. Another offered six tickets.
“The city along with the United States Secret Service are monitoring ticket sales sites to remove tickets that are for sale,” said Monica Klein, a spokeswoman for Mayor de Blasio.
On Friday, eBay announced it would remove tickets to papal events in Philadelphia after scalpers flooded the site earlier this week.
Despite the crackdown, a few ticket postings were still being offered on Craigslist on Saturday.
One cheeky seller even put a $1 million price tag on the tickets, before clarifying “I am not looking for $1,000,000 for the pair. I want to hear offers . . . $1,000 is a bit much and anything over that I will assume is a troll.”