Pleas for Tickets to Papal Mass Inundate Archdiocese

With seven weeks until Pope Benedict XVI lands in Washington, the hunt is on for one of the hottest tickets of the year: to the Mass he will offer at Nationals Park on April 17.

Pleading letters and e-mails are flooding into the offices of parish priests. Requests for tickets are appearing on eBay and Craigslist. Diocese officials are fielding phone calls from desperate Catholics as far away as Australia. All to be one of the 45,000 people who will crowd into the stadium for his celebration of the Eucharist.

Monsignor W. Ronald Jameson, rector of St. Matthew's Cathedral in the District, has received hundreds of letters and e-mails, in English and Spanish, many with a heartrending story of why the sender should be chosen to go to the Mass. A woman who experienced two miscarriages and believes the Mass will help relieve her grief. A man who suffers from HIV and hopes the Mass will produce a miracle. A wife whose husband has just returned from a two-year deployment to Iraq.

"It's going to be a difficult choice," Jameson said.

The Washington Archdiocese, which controls the tickets to the Mass in the District, is still working on how to distribute them. So far, it has announced that it will give 14,000 tickets to 120 other archdioceses. Arlington will receive the most: 6,000.

Today, church officials will announce how many tickets will go to each of the 140 parishes within the Archdiocese of Washington, which includes the District and suburban Maryland.

Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said the office has received enough requests from other dioceses, parish groups, youth groups and individuals to fill Nationals Park twice. "It's been amazing," she said.

Demand has also been strong for tickets to the pope's appearances in New York, where he will celebrate Mass at Yankee Stadium on April 20, but not in all parishes. At the 7,200-family St. Clare's parish on Staten Island, the youth minister had 83 takers for 96 tickets to an April 19 youth rally, despite putting out two calls for interested young people and parents active in youth programs.

But for many Catholics, a Mass celebrated by the pope, even with tens of thousands of other people on hand, is more than a religious ritual. They might think that Benedict lacks the charisma of his predecessor, John Paul II, but the 80-year-old pontiff still represents the spiritual and moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

The distribution of tickets for services in New York and Washington is largely limited to Catholics, who must request them through their parishes or other Catholic organizations to which they belong.

The Arlington Diocese, which stretches from Northern Virginia south to Lancaster and west to the Shenandoah, is dividing up its 6,000-ticket allotment among groups of recipients: parishes, students at Catholic high schools, members of college ministries, people considering becoming priests and nuns. Top priority is given to "youth and people devoting their lives to God," said Mark Herrmann, chancellor of the diocese.

Herrmann said it has been left to chaplains, principals and pastors to create a distribution system. "They can do random drawings, essays. Whatever they come up with, frankly, is fine," he said. "The only hard and fast rule is these will be free."