PHILADELPHIA—After an outcry over plans to keep most of Pope Francis’s audience at his biggest Philadelphia events at least a half-mile away, organizers on Thursday announced the pontiff will parade through downtown twice and said they would set aside 30,000 tickets for the public to get a closer view.
Donna Crilley Farrell, executive director of the World Meeting of Families—the triennial Catholic conference attracting Francis to Philadelphia—said the parades, along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway where Francis will attend the World Meeting’s closing ceremony on September 26 and celebrate an outdoor mass on September 27, will give everyone an opportunity to see the pontiff up close.
“Everyone wants to see the pope, and we totally, totally get that,” she said. Farrell moved quickly to respond to the backlash, calling a press conference outside her office after she said she was caught off guard by a Secret Service announcement on Wednesday revealing the long-discussed ticket plan.
A five-block space from Francis’s stage and altar in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the fountain at Logan Circle will be restricted to ticket holders, organizers said. They cited crowd control and security concerns. The tickets will be free, but hard to come by. Besides public allotments announced on Thursday of 10,000 for each of Francis’s three outdoor events, tickets are only being given to parishioners and special guests.
Organizers would not say how many tickets were being printed or how many were being given to event sponsors. The ticketing fiasco erupted a week after organizers ramped up marketing and unveiled a new slogan, “I’ll Be There,” to encourage attendance amid fears that months of discussions about tight security had scared people from attending. Hotel bookings, rail pass purchases and charter bus signups have all been far lower than expected.
Farrell continued the campaign on Thursday, calling the parkway the best place in the US to see Francis—even if that view is partially obscured by trees, fountains and sculptures.