CORRECTION: The Most Rev. Anthony Taylor is bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock. Also, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church is located in North Little Rock. This article incorrectly described the territory over which Taylor has authority and misidentified Immaculate Conception's location.
WASHINGTON -- Want to see Pope Francis at the U.S. Capitol next month? If so, it's time to call your congressman.
Arkansas' congressional delegation has more than 600 tickets available for the Sept. 24 speech, the first time a pontiff has addressed Congress.
“We’ve had a few inquiries from Arkansans potentially interested in the outdoor tickets, but we definitely still have some available.”
Claire Burghoff, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Steve Womack
The six members of Arkansas' congressional delegation can each invite one guest to sit in the House of Representatives gallery to see the pope's address. Most of those tickets are gone.
But there hasn't been much interest from Arkansans in the hundreds of tickets available to watch the pope's remarks on a giant screen outside the Capitol on the West Front Lawn. Pope Francis is scheduled to briefly appear on a balcony and, if there is time, address the crowd.
House members each have 50 tickets for outside the Capitol building, and senators each have 200. There is also a handful of tickets available for seats outside and for an indoor overflow room.
In some states, demand is high enough for the outdoor tickets that lawmakers are holding lotteries or contests to determine which constituents get them.
But staff officials for Arkansas' delegation say they can barely give them away.
Rep. Steve Womack isn't being inundated with requests, said his spokesman Claire Burghoff.
"We've had a few inquiries from Arkansans potentially interested in the outdoor tickets, but we definitely still have some available," she said. The tickets will go to whoever asks for them, she said, and Arkansans get first dibs.
Womack invited Susan Barrett, former president of Mercy Health System of Northwest Arkansas, as his gallery guest to see the speech.
Fewer than 10 tickets have been requested so far from Rep. Rick Crawford's office, his spokesman James Arnold said.
"We are starting a list of requests like we do for inaugurations, and if there is more demand for what we have, we may decide to do a lottery for the tickets," Arnold said.
Crawford invited Jonesboro attorney Warren Dupwe to sit in the House gallery. Dupwe was the Republican candidate in the 1st Congressional District race against Crawford's predecessor, U.S. Rep. Marion Berry of Gillett, in 1996.
Rep. Bruce Westerman also still has tickets, his spokesman Ryan Saylor said.
"If people are interested, at this point we're trying to do it first come, first serve," Saylor said. "It'll be prioritized with constituents first."
Hot Springs native Rachael Pellegrino, who is attending medical school at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., jumped at the gallery ticket offered by Westerman, Saylor said.
"She is one of the few people that have inquired about the tickets," he said.
Rep. French Hill still hasn't decided who will get his House gallery ticket, and only about a dozen people have asked about tickets so far, his spokesman Mike Siegel said.
On the Senate side, Arkansans John Boozman and Tom Cotton are still working out how best to distribute their tickets, including for the seats in the House chamber, their staffs said.
Cotton spokesman Caroline Rabbitt said some people have called or emailed about tickets, "but I wouldn't say it's been an overwhelming amount."
Boozman spokesman Patrick Creamer said that if the more than 200 allotted tickets aren't used by Arkansans, they will likely be made available to senators in other states, something he said is common for big events at the Capitol.
Demand for the tickets "just kind of depends on the Catholic population in your state," Creamer said.
In 2013, there were 122,662 Catholics in Arkansas, about 4.2 percent of the population, according to a report by the Glenmary Research Center, the research arm of Glenmary Home Missioners, which works to increase the Catholic Church's presence in the South.
Most of Arkansas' Catholics lived in a handful of counties on the western edge of the state, according to the report. It listed Washington County with 12.7 percent, Sebastian County with 9.8 percent, Yell County with 8.2 percent, Benton County with 7.6 percent and Sevier County with 7.1 percent.
Pulaski County had a Catholic population of 6.3 percent, according to the report.
While in Washington, D.C., Pope Francis is to meet with President Barack Obama at the White House, celebrate a Mass of Canonization of Junipero Serra at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and meet with local Catholic charities.
He is to travel to New York City to address the United Nations, participate in a multireligious service at the 9/11 ground zero site and celebrate a Mass in Madison Square Garden. He will then go to Philadelphia to speak at the World Meeting of Families and visit Catholic inmates at the Curran-Fromhold prison.
Little Rock Archdiocese Bishop Anthony Taylor is to travel to Washington and Philadelphia for several events, but the diocese has still to determine who else from Arkansas will travel to the East Coast or whether they will need tickets to any of the pope's scheduled events, spokesman Dennis Lee said.
Members of several Arkansas churches are traveling to the East Coast by bus, and Taylor plans to bless some of the groups before they set off on their trips, Lee said.
Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Little Rock is taking 162 people to Philadelphia from parishes across the state, Youth Director Christie Powell said.
That group plans to leave Arkansas hours after Pope Francis has spoken to Congress, and it's too late to change their plans, which have been in the works for more than half a year, she said.
Powell said she wasn't aware that the state's delegation had free tickets available for the pope's speech at the Capitol. The church group plans to attend two events in Philadelphia that don't require tickets and that are expected to draw large crowds.
"It's all ticketless, so it's all dog-eat-dog," Powell said. "Dang, I wish I had known about these other things."
Arkansans who want tickets to the pope's D.C. event can call Boozman's office at (202) 224-4843; Cotton's at (202) 224-2353, Hill's at (202) 225-2506, Westerman's at (202) 225-3772, Crawford's at (202) 225-4076, and Womack's at (202) 225-4301.
Metro on 08/26/2015