Some people are looking to make a quick buck off of the Pope’s visit next week. Tickets, which were all distributed for free, are now being scalped for significant sums of cash on sites like Craigslist.
A quick search on New York’s Craigslist site brings up multiple listings. One offers four tickets at $250 each, another is asking $1,500 for a pair of tickets for Pope Francis’ Central Park procession on Sept. 25. On the Philadelphia Craigslist, one bold seller is asking $5,000 for a single ticket to the Pope’s appearance at Independence Hall. (His or her sales pitch is tempting: “Text me if you want this stupid ticket to see the stupid pope [sic].”)
The Catholic Church is not particularly happy about the reselling. A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia reported the scalping to local law enforcement, telling the Wall Street Journal that they had intended to provide “free tickets while preventing scalping or hoarding.”