Dear Parishioners and Friends of Ascension,

The upcoming visit of Pope Francis to New York in September is both historic and highly anticipated. As you all know by now, his visit will be brief. The Holy Father will arrive in New York on Thursday evening, September 24, and will depart early Saturday morning, September 26, for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

The Holy Father will celebrate Mass at Madison Square Garden on Friday evening, September 25. Presently, the Mass is scheduled for 6:30 pm. Regarding tickets to the Mass, please keep in mind that the visit is brief – one day – and that Madison Square Garden holds about half of Yankee Stadium which has been used for previous Papal visits. (Seating capacity for Madison Square Garden is approximately 18,200 and seating capacity for Yankee Stadium is 49,642.) Parishes will receive tickets based on a formula using Mass attendance to ensure that all parishes are treated equally. 24,000 tickets will be distributed throughout the parishes of the Archdiocese. As of now, we have received no word as to how many tickets our parish will be receiving thus we do not know exactly how we will be distributing the tickets. Therefore, if you are interested in attending the Mass, please call Yesenia in the rectory (212-222-0666, option 4) as soon as possible. We will create a list. If we do not have enough tickets to accommodate all those interested, then we put all of the individual names together in a tumbler (hat), and draw out names according to the number of tickets allotted to Ascension.

Catholic Charities of our own Archdiocese has created a wonderful website through which all are invited to post a short (video) word of welcome to our Holy Father. Please visit http://charityhasnoboundaries.org/​.

Below is the itinerary of the Pope’s visit:

Thursday, September 24
5:00p.m Pope Francis arrives from DC at JFK; Brief welcoming ceremony.
5:30p.m. [Hopeful] motorcade in an open vehicle up 5 ^th Avenue.
6:00p.m. Vespers, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral (in attendance:
representative priests, representative religious women, men,
representative deacons, lay leaders (members of boards),
representative priests, deacons, and religious from dioceses of
Brooklyn and Rockville Center, Benefactors of cathedral and
archdiocese
7:30p.m. Evening at residence of Nuncio to United Nations, 72 ^nd Street

Friday, September 25
8:30a.m. Visit to United Nations
11:30a.m. Inter-religious gathering at 9/11 Memorial
1:00p.m. Luncheon at United Nations Residence
4:00p.m. Visit to Our Lady Queen of Angels School, Harlem
4:30p.m. Visit with immigrants cared for by Catholic Charities in adjoining auditorium
5:00p.m. [Hopeful] open Motorcade through city to Madison Square Garden
6:00p.m. Mass, Madison Square Garden (In attendance: all priests of the
archdiocese invited to concelebrate, 24,000 tickets distributed
through parishes.

Saturday, September 26
Early morning private departure for World Meeting of Families, Philadelphia, PA.

Peace, Fr. Kearney