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Lottery for tickets to pope's Yankee Stadium Mass

BY BART JONES | bart.jones@newsday.com

6:39 PM EST, January 17, 2008

Pope Benedict XVI holds his first general audience of 2008 in St.Peter's Basilica in Vatican. (Getty Images)

Roman Catholic parishes across Long Island will begin distributing forms this weekend for people who want to attend Pope Benedict XVI's Mass at Yankee Stadium in April, church officials said Thursday.

Those filling out the forms in the Diocese of Rockville Centre will take part in a lottery in which winners will be randomly selected, said Sean Dolan, a spokesman for the Diocese of Rockville Centre.

The diocese still does not know how many tickets it will be allocated, but is estimating 500 to 1,500. "It's definitely going to be a limited number," Dolan said. "The demand will far outstrip the available supply."

A little under 60,000 people will be allowed to attend the Mass, scheduled for Sunday, April 20, said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, which is coordinating the pope's visit. Church officials do not plan to use the field at the stadium other than part of the foul area.

Zwilling said the archdiocese has received requests for tickets from almost all of the 195 dioceses and archdioceses in the country, including as far away as Hawaii. The U.S. is home to 69 million Catholics, or about one in four Americans.

The Mass will be the culmination of five-day trip by the pope -- his first to the U.S. It will include a visit to Washington, D.C., a speech before the United Nations General Assembly, and a visit to Ground Zero.

Bishop William Murphy of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, a longtime Rome insider, is expected to take an active part in the bishop's visit. Dolan said he will be among those greeting the pope when he arrives at Kennedy Airport on April 15 and will also travel to Washington, D.C. for that segment of the trip.

Zwilling said the archdiocese expects to begin distributing tickets for the Yankee Stadium Mass to dioceses throughout the country in the next couple of weeks. It will be up to local bishops and archbishops to determine how to distribute their allotment of tickets.

The single largest bulk of tickets will go to the Archdiocese of New York, while nearby dioceses will also get a larger number than dioceses farther away, he said. Also getting special treatment will be three dioceses which like New York are celebrating their bicentennials -- Boston, Philadelphia and Louisville. The archdiocese of Baltimore, which is marking its 200th anniversary as the first diocese in the United States that was turned into an archdiocese, also will get extra tickets.

The tickets are free and non-transferrable -- meaning only the person whose name they will bear can use them.

Dolan said church officials were still deciding whether any of Rockville Centre's allotted tickets for the Mass would be set aside for priests, nuns and other religious workers.

Some priests from around the nation will get to attend a private Mass with the pope at St. Patrick's Cathedral.