Wednesday, September 08, 2010

One quarter of tickets to see Pope left unsold

Just three-quarters of the 100,000 tickets for Glasgow’s papal Mass later this month have been sold, it has been revealed.

Organisers of Pope Benedict XVI’s state visit to Britain said that 75,000 passes have been allocated for the Mass at Bellahouston Park – 25,000 short of the capacity.

When Pope John Paul II came to Glasgow in 1982, he celebrated Mass with 300,000 people in the same venue.

The low take-up comes after it emerged pilgrims attending the Mass would be expected to fork out four times as much as those attending the Pope’s prayer vigil in London.

The £20 donation for the Bellahouston appearance compares to the cut-price £5 charge for the Hyde Park visit.

Asked about the take-up for the papal Mass in Glasgow, a senior visit source told The Herald: “If you were to use a ball park of 75,000 you won’t be far out. That is how many are earmarked or spoken for. The capacity is 100,000. There can’t be more than that.”

The source added: “But the park can be configured whatever way necessary. If they are not all allocated by the end of the process then the capacity will be whatever the final allocated number is.”

It is understood that, of more than 2500 tickets allocated to Ireland, fewer than one-fifth had so far been purchased.

One would-be pilgrim who decided not to go to Bellahouston Park said she was not surprised others had also been put off because of the cost.

“For my husband and I to go would have cost £40, which is a lot of money during these times of supposed austerity and we decided it was too much,” she said.

It is understood that, across the UK, hundreds of tickets have had to be reallocated by the Catholic Church following a failure of several dioceses to meet their targets for sales.

The Catholic Church in Scotland said 5% of parishes had still to put in applications for places and were still hopeful more would be taken up – but were unable to provide numbers.

Peter Kearney, spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland, said: “The process is still ongoing and not been completed. It is not fair to say that it is done and finished.

“More than 95% of parishes have put in their applications for places.

“There are one or two that haven’t. But part of the reason for that is some have said either we don’t want our full allocation or we want more than our full allocation so there is a clearing house process working of matching demand and supply.

“How many people could come in the remainder of this week? I just don’t know.

“But the position is that we don’t want anyone to be excluded because they left it late. On the other hand you have to make the point that you just can’t decide the day before.”

The news came as a survey by Ipsos MORI for The Tablet, a Catholic newspaper, found that one-in-five people planned to follow the visit closely. This falls to one-in-10 among those with no religious connection.

The £20 donation for the Bellahouston visit is to cover transport and the cost of a pilgrim pack with a CD and an information booklet. But the church has said that those who decide at the last minute may have to make their own transport arrangements.

It emerged at the weekend that south of the Border at least seven dioceses were understood to have sent back hundreds of tickets for the prayer vigil in Hyde Park and the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman in Birmingham.

Organisers blamed a lack of coaches for pilgrims and a 6am starting time required to attend the beatification ceremony. But there was also known to be disquiet over charges.

When the plans for the visit were announced earlier this year, it was expected to spark excitement among Scotland’s 850,000 Catholics and bring back memories of Pope John Paul II’s Bellahouston Mass.

Pope Benedict will travel by Popemobile along Princes Street in Edinburgh, before heading for Glasgow.

The cost of the four-day state visit is estimated at about £20 million. Members of the Catholic Church will have to cover £7m of the bill, while taxpayers will foot the rest.

SIC: HS/UK