Pope Francis will make a flying trip to Knock Shrine [1] as part of his visit to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families in August. His itinerary will also include visits to the Capuchin Day Centre for Homeless People, a prison, and a private meeting with victims of clerical sex abuse.
His two main public events will be a Festival of Families in Croke Park on Saturday evening, Aug 25th, and a mass in the Phoenix Park on Sunday afternoon at 3pm.
Meanwhile, the numbers of those booked to attend the events prior to the Pope’s arrival looks set to sell out [2]. WMoF2018 spokesperson Brenda Drumm said, to date, 30,000 people had registered for the three-day pastoral congress at the RDS on Wednesday August 22nd through to Friday August 24th. “It looks like we are going to sell out the RDS,” she said. A third of the people registered are from a total of 103 countries abroad. “It has been really, really encouraging,” she said.