Posted September 8, 2015

It only took two minutes. The 10,000 tickets for reserved seating at the Independence Hall address by Pope Francis on Sept. 26 became available today, Sept. 8, at 12 noon. By 12:02 p.m., they were all gone, according to the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

Despite some people’s fears over how they will get into Philadelphia and where they will witness the big events of Sept. 26-27, when Pope Francis makes his historic first visit to the city and the United States, demand for access to the festivities remains strong.

(See a related story: Musical line-up before papal address includes Philly Pops)

The archdiocese said the worldmeeting2015.org website on which the tickets were available experienced 394,000 unique visitors — in tech speak, the number of people coming to the website — in just those two minutes.

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To get some of the 10,000 tickets for the Festival of Families with the pope on Saturday, Sept. 26 or the 10,000 more tickets for the papal Mass on Sunday, Sept. 27, rev up your computer or smart phone on Wednesday, Sept. 9. Free tickets go up on worldmeeting2015.org/tickets at 4 p.m. for the Festival of Families on Sept. 26 and at 8 p.m. for the papal Mass.

Visit the website to obtain up to four tickets per person — first-come, first-served — while the tickets last.

And judging by today, they won’t last very long.