I mentioned a letter that I had written to Monsignor, requesting a ticket to the Mass that the Holy Father will give at the baseball stadium in April. Saw this morning a small piece of the puzzle.

Tickets Arrive For Pope’s Mass In Washington

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Archdiocese of Washington is giving 14,000 tickets to about 120 Catholic dioceses for the April Mass that will be celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI at the Nationals ballpark.

Archdiocese spokeswoman Susan Gibbs says the biggest share will go to the Diocese of Arlington, which will receive 6,000 tickets. The Archdiocese of Baltimore will receive 2,500.

Gibbs says the Archdiocese of Washington will announce Friday the ticket allocation to parishes that are part of the archdiocese. Each parish will receive tickets based on the size of its Mass attendance and whether it has a school or significant religious education program.

So, I was figuring that the stadium held about 45,000 people, but I wasn’t sure how many of those would be alloted to the various parishes. I thought if Monsignor got 100 tickets, then I was out of luck. If he got 1,000, maybe I had a chance. If he got 10,000, then I was in for sure. But I had no clue at all as to how many tickets he would have to work with when considering requests.

This new info makes me think he’s got closer to 100 than 1,000. I mean, if the whole Archdiocese only has 14,000 to work with, and then over half of those are going to Arlington and Baltimore alone, then I can’t see St. Matt’s getting 1,000 of the remaining. Not with like 143 parishes in the Archdiocese of Washington. That averages out to only 38 tickets per parish. But the Cathedral likely gets more than average, being bigger than average? Maybe. Dunno.

And what about the remaining 30,000 or so, the share of the stadium that the Archdiocese doesn’t have to give out? I was figuring that the schools in the Archdiocese would get a big share as well. And looking at the Archdiocese’s website, apparently they’ve got 106 schools and nearly 31,000 students. Sounds about right.

A quick check, though, at the stadium’s website tells me that it seats 41,222, not quite the 45,000 figure I was working with. But were just tossing around rough numbers here. Heck, maybe they’ll get another couple thousand on the field anyway.