Op-Ed: Many Scottish reject chance to see Pope during September visit

Glasgow - While the deadline has passed now to get tickets for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Glasgow's Bellahouston Park next month, it emerges that some parishes are returnng more than half of their allocated 400 tickets -- unsold.

As one can read in the Scotland Herald today, sales for the upcoming visit of the Catholic Church's great leader are very disappointing. Not to me, mind you, but to those in parishes and -- as the Herald says -- to those in the Papal Visit office who will be counting how many returns they have received. It seems clear now that the uptake will fall short of the 100,000 pilgrims expected to turn out for the historic mass at Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, on September 16. Even those projected 100,000 are a far cry from the Mass at Bellahouston in 1982 (by Pope John Paul II) that was attended by 300,000 faithful and spectators. No one, of course, dares to say openly that John Paul II was a more popular pontiff than Benedict XVI, and the Herald article doesn't at all mention the possibility that the many catholic child abuse scandals could have something to do with the lack of people flocking to watch and listen to the church's primate -- but we can all make up our own minds. Priests of the affected parishes have been scratching their heads while trying to find reasons for this failure to attract a big crowd, and what they came up with was the potential for bad weather in mid-September, opposed to a balmy day in June of 1982. They do have a point there, but I'm sure it's just one point among many.

The Papal Visit website

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In their great wisdom and disregard for the flock, organisers expect people to be in the park more than 2 hours before the pope is expected on stage, there will be no seating in the park which means people will have to remain standing for more than four hours, from 3.00pm at the latest until 7.30 when the event is scheduled to end. September in Scotland can be cold, can be rainy, can be windy. However, true fans are known not to mind wading through muddy fields for days in order to see their favorite bands (see Glastonbury, Woodstock, Pink Pop), and that so many Scots are not prepared for a little suffering in this case speaks books. The event is expected to cost £1.5 million, money that most likely would have been better spent on purchasing condoms for Africa. For the pope, a disappointing attendance will not really matter -- he's above such materialistic concerns. Anyway, his highlight of the day will have been in the morning, when he'll be received by Her Majesty The Queen in the Palace of Holyrood House in Edinburgh. Itinerary For the complete Itinerary of the Pope's visit to Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Birmingham, see this dedicated website.