Many priest in the Archdiocese of New York have the same pastoral dilemma I have.  Many people who want tickets to Papal Events and not enough tickets.  Pope Francis is graciously going through a procession in central park on Friday 9/25/15.  The City of New York gave out 80,000 tickets.  I first heard about this on 1010 wins and told my parishioners. Some of them were able to get tickets.  I myself received two tickets which did not last 24 hours in my possession!  This was by far the easiest ticket to get since according to the New York Times only 93,143 people applied for them and 40,000 pairs were given out.  The odds were almost 1:2 to get one of these tickets if you were fortunate to hear the news that they were available and were a New York City resident.  By contrast the most difficult ticket to get is the one to Vespers at Saint Patrick's Cathedra on 9/24/15.  Even I couldn't get one of those for myself.  Priests here in New York were able to enter into a lottery in order to get a ticket.  I was fortunate to secure four tickets for myself and three parishioners to a live streaming of the papal vespers at Saint Patrick's Cathedral.  This event was put together by Corazon Puro and the Office of Young Adult Outreach of the Archdiocese of New York and will take place at Our Lady of Good Counsel in Manhattan.  Tickets are required and are no longer available.  The event will be streamed live here: https://www.youtube.com/user/olgcny  Approximately 1,000 people most of which are young adults will be present at that event.  On Thursday, some lucky people will have tickets to be on the steps of Saint Patrick's Cathedral as Pope Francis arrives.  The best event of all the events in my opinion will be the Mass celebrated at Madison Square Garden.  The picture is of my friends Papal Concelebration Ticket.  Only 20,000 fortunate people were able to get tickets to this event through their parishes in the Archdiocese of New York.  I was fortunate to be able to get an extra ticket for a priest friend of mine.  I'm still asking people for tickets.  If you have a ticket you will not use I have plenty of parishioners that would like to attend any of these events.  Please contact me at 845.204.8981.  Text messages work best for that number.  Please do not call or text to request tickets as I do not have any to give out.  The closing idea for this blog is that it is awesome that we all want to see the Vicar of Christ here in New York.  Pope Francis would agree that their is one greater than him who will be at every Catholic Church in the world this Sunday.  His name is Jesus and no tickets are required.  God Bless You.

For more information on papal events visit http://www.popefrancisvisit.com/