Cardinal Newman’s beatification ticket may have just gotten a lot harder to score. The Telegraph reports the pope’s visit is over budget, and events may be downsized or trimmed back.
There is now talk of downgrading the pinnacle of the visit, the beatification of Cardinal Newman before 200,000 pilgrims at Coventry Airport, to an event attended by just 10,000 at a seminary in Birmingham, St Mary’s, Oscott.
I wasn’t planning on attending–though it would be so sweet to visit England. Other pilgrims from overseas may want to wait this out, and see if the finances get unsnarled. The Cardinal Newman event may be more than twenty times harder to attend. You know the hierarchy and dignitaries are attending, even if they had to hold the event in a shoebox. Factor in the priests and seminarians, and maybe the laity are up for seven or eight thousand tickets instead of nearly 200K.
5 June 2010 at 10:25 am
How ironic, considering JHN’s universalistic outlook. Perhaps the ‘encircling gloom’ is all-too pervasive for the up-and-coming saint to penetrate.
5 June 2010 at 3:20 pm
Well, the chapel (see image link below), a lovely work by Pugin, is obviously too small even to fit the hierarchs, so I assume it would be held on the grounds.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/4152568530/sizes/l/
If it is still going to be outdoors, wouldn’t be lovely if Oxford University were to offer the use of one of its athletic fields?