Missing the papal Mass elicits mixed emotions

JUAREZ - Pope Francis zoomed by too fast for 5-year-old Odalis del Rio.

“I went like this but I don’t think he saw me,” Odalis said as she demonstrated her pope wave with her tiny hands.

But no worries, her dad Jose Oscar del Rio captured the split second on cell phone video, perfectly timing when the pontiff passed by in the popemobile on the road leading into the Mass site Wednesday.

“We never forget such good days, they become great memories,” her mother Mayra Marquez, a 31-year-old homemaker and hair stylist, chimed in.

The family had tickets for the Mass, but said they didn’t get in on time. People had to be in the Mass site by 2 p.m., and the line was still long and ticket takers started turning people away.

Volunteers and officials at the gates said they did not know how many people might have been turned away, but said some elderly and others with special needs were let in the gates late.

“Um, no,” people said as they were turned away, some more frustrated than others.

For Odalis, it was a blessing in disguise.

“We were better off here in the shade with (Odalis). It was too hot over there, but it would have been nice to be there, too,” said the 29-year-old Oscar del Rio, who works in cabling. Others had slightly harsher words. “Our tickets were good for two things: Nothing, and nothing,” Francisco Dominguez Gonzalez said in Spanish as he sat exhausted on the sidewalk of a corner store. “All day here and here we are.”

Despite having a yellow ticket for the Mass, Dominguez and his wife Maria de los Angeles Rosales Lopez were among many who weren’t allowed in after that section filled up.

“You can’t be mad. Well, you can, a little,” he said.

“It was okay because it was a historic day for us no matter what and we had for today, even with all this craziness, a sense of tranquility,” said Dominguez, a taxi driver who also coaches little league.