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Jeffrey Bruno
World News

Pope's visit to Ireland sees high demand in ticket registration

The Pope chose the Republic of Ireland as the location for the tri-annual event World Meeting of Families between 21st-26th August.

It's a gathering for families which aims to celebrate, pray and reflect upon the importance of marriage and the family as the cornerstone of life, society and the Church.

The team running the event say they have had an unprecedented amount of interest. At 5am on Monday morning, they released 500,000 tickets for the closing mass in Phoenix Park in Dublin and by 5pm the same day 285,000 were gone.

Tickets for Pope Francis' visit to Knock Shrine, a Roman Catholic pilgrimage site, were fully booked in less than five hours.

4,000 people on facebook though have said they are 'interested' in an event called 'Say no to the Pope', with 1,100 people clicking 'going'.

The group have said they are peacefully protesting the Pope's visit and are registering for free tickets but will not turn up.

One user posted: "Keep up the good work everyone! This isn't about depriving people of faith their right to worship.

"This is a peaceful protest against a truly corrupt organisation which has caused incalculable harm to a great many people and which continues to do so; which has permitted child abuse and which obstructs and perverts the course of justice on a massive scale in order to cover it up."

The user also cites misogyny, homophobia and hypocrisy as reasons to reject the event and institution and concludes: "And we are saying NO MORE."

Other people have criticised the actions of the protesters on the event page, saying it is cruel to deprive people who have been waiting their whole lives to see a Pope.

"I would like to know who gives you people the right to deny all these thousands of people because of opinions you hold on the church and the Clergy," a Facebook user commented.

Brenda Drumm, the media and communications manager for the World Meeting of Families told Premier: "We've allowed people to register to book groups or to register as a family."

Groups of twelve and eight can be obtained in one go, depending on the event.

Drumm added: "We are confident that the robust system we have in place will check and validate all bookings received and any invalid bookings will be removed at a later stage."

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