Thousands of tickets for Pope Benedict UK visit unsold

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Yeah, looked to me as though Bellahouston Park was almost full.
 
Will there still be enough time to grab one?

God Bless,

Christopher.
 
CGDouglas said:
Will there still be enough time to grab one?

God Bless,

Christopher.
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We were able to get tickets this morning from our neighbouring parish, which is smaller than our own but had just as many tickets.
 
Can somebody in the UK clear something up ? Are people actually being required to pay 20 and 25 pounds to attend these open air masses ? If they are, it would seem the claims of how much this is costing taxpayers are invalid. Also, it would very clearly explain why attendances have been way down from 1982 when I believe everything was free. Asking people in these harsh economic times to pay 20-25 pounds to attend mass is positively disgraceful and if I lived in Glasgow I would not attend.
 
Seamus_L said:
Can somebody in the UK clear something up ? Are people actually being required to pay 20 and 25 pounds to attend these open air masses ? If they are, it would seem the claims of how much this is costing taxpayers are invalid. Also, it would very clearly explain why attendances have been way down from 1982 when I believe everything was free. Asking people in these harsh economic times to pay 20-25 pounds to attend mass is positively disgraceful and if I lived in Glasgow I would not attend.
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Itā€™s a state visit with a pastoral element. The taxpayer picks up the state visit costs and the catholic faithful are being charged to make up the 7 million or so shortfall for the pastoral costs. There were also collections at masses for weeks before the event in addition. Thatā€™s my understanding.
 
GeoCyclist said:
Itā€™s a state visit with a pastoral element. The taxpayer picks up the state visit costs and the catholic faithful are being charged to make up the 7 million or so shortfall for the pastoral costs. There were also collections at masses for weeks before the event in addition. Thatā€™s my understanding.
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And if the UK newsmedia hadnā€™tcontinually harped on the cost for weeks in advance, I wonder if the faithful would have been asked to pay for the visit, if it would have been paid for by the government?

Or, I wonder if before, the parishes or the larger Church were able to chip in more easily?
 
Dwyer said:
Several overseas news sources (Radio Netherlands; RTE) report that the people who attended the Bellahouston Park Mass in Glasgow numbered an estimated 70,000:
abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/17/3014184.htm?site=news
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R. Arroyo on EWTN said it looked like 100,000; he said St. Peterā€™s Square holds 200,000 and that the crowd looked to him even bigger than that.

The article said more than 100,000 lined the streets, but I read or heard (canā€™t remember now) that the police reported it was 125,000.
 
GraceSofia said:
And if the UK newsmedia hadnā€™tcontinually harped on the cost for weeks in advance, I wonder if the faithful would have been asked to pay for the visit, if it would have been paid for by the government?
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Iā€™m not sure the media had much to do with it. It seems the plans to charge were already worked out and sent to the parishes during the first part of July.
catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/07/14/faithful-urged-to-apply-as-soon-as-possible-for-papal-visit-places/
 
The trip was announced on Feb. 1st. By the tenth of February a leading homosexualist activist had organised a protest, and was already trying to wind people up by using the estimated 20 million pounds estimate, and it was in the news.
They kept up a steady drum beat.:mad:
 
GraceSofia said:
The trip was announced on Feb. 1st. By the tenth of February a leading homosexualist activist had organised a protest, and was already trying to wind people up by using the estimated 20 million pounds estimate, and it was in the news.
They kept up a steady drum beat.:mad:
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Although I know that that does not necessarily prove that it was because of the media.
No way to know really.
 
I was in the front lines at Bellahouston :D! It was a brilliant day, one I will never forget. All the media scaremongering of course proved to be false. The park was mobbed and the organisation inside was wonderful.

And I was only mere feet away from the heir of St Peter! Are you jealous :p?!
Seamus_L said:
Can somebody in the UK clear something up ? Are people actually being required to pay 20 and 25 pounds to attend these open air masses ? If they are, it would seem the claims of how much this is costing taxpayers are invalid. Also, it would very clearly explain why attendances have been way down from 1982 when I believe everything was free. Asking people in these harsh economic times to pay 20-25 pounds to attend mass is positively disgraceful and if I lived in Glasgow I would not attend.
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No, people were not required to pay Ā£20 for their Pilgrim Pass etcetera. If you couldnā€™t make Ā£20 the parishes were more than happy to make up the difference.

And yes, the claims that this is going to bust Britainā€™s pockets are obviously outlandish. The Church is footing half the bill and at the end of the day we Catholics have been paying taxes for generations to protect Orange Parades etcetera. I would love to see Mr Dawkins protesting in Glasgow on July 12th. The security directed into the Orange Parades will dwarf the bill of this papal visit.
 
tzarno1 said:
From the reign of Henry VIII to the present there has always been a virulent, anti-Catholic
bias in England. The recent cover, of course, is the pedophile scandal. I wonder if any
English have ever read a neutral history of their country relative to Catholicism. The wholesale destruction of the Faith that was once the faith of the country to the forced importation of Protestantism to Ireland.

This goes way beyond current eventsā€¦
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It really does go beyond current events ā€“ it goes back over 500 years and it reaches back to the more recent horrific violence in Ireland, which spilled over into England in ways that we never heard about.

On my first trip to London, in 1993, my friend and I hired a taxi for a more personalized evening tour of the most famous sites (jet lag and all thatā€¦). He said then that tour guides and taxi drivers had been instructed to avoid recent blast sites caused by the Irish so that tourists would not be aware of the extent of the ongoing violence (and thus supposedly not be afraid to return and bring more American dollarsā€¦).

It wasnā€™t only Catholics who suffered and died during the years during and after Henry VIIIā€™s actions ā€“ consider ā€œBloody Maryā€™sā€ documented history of Protestant persecution.

England is VERY anti-Catholic and Iā€™m not a bit surprised at the reaction of UK citizens ā€“ Iā€™m more surprised that anyone expected anything better. Their press is infamous for its sensationalism and, of course, the British people have heard nothing but negative statements about the RCC for years ā€“ as in forever. We have to admit that the basis for at least SOME of the negativity is real as it rests in the despicable actions of sick men and woefully poor handling of the resultant scandals.

In the eyes of many British and European citizens, the Church is gravely tainted by its way-too-human actions, and the Pope is the head of the Churchā€¦ā€œthe buck stops there.ā€

Surely, itā€™s disrespectful to the head of the largest Church in the world and to the head of the Vatican State ā€“ but I think its understandable given the anti-Catholic culture the Brits have propogated for those 500 years ā€“ and some of it with good reason.
 
This is nonsense. First of all the Catholic Church in Scotland were not ā€˜sellingā€™ tickets for a Mass, never mind a Papal Mass.
I was there, in Edinburgh and at Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, and it was a glorious day, the atmosphere was electric, it was spiritually uplifting and there was a huge congregation. Donā€™t listen to the naysayers.
 
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