Marion family heads to Philly to see pope

MARION - At the age of 4, Michele Brock and her family visited Des Moines to see Pope John Paul II deliver Mass.

That wouldn't be the last time she saw a sitting pope in person.

When she and her husband, Doug, celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary in 2011 in Rome, they saw Pope Benedict at St. Peter's Basilica, where he often granted blessings and led audiences in prayer.

Next week marks the third time she hopes to see the pope in person, when Pope Francis visits the United State for the first time.

Among other events, he'll address a joint session of Congress in Washington, visit ground zero in New York and end his visit with Mass at the World Meeting of Families conference Sept. 27 in Philadelphia.

This time, Brock gets to share the experience with her two daughters, ages 5 and 16, just like when she was a four year old standing in a sea of people with her five sisters and parents.

'They're excited to go,” Brock said. 'There's just that excitement of being with thousands of people who are people of faith, too.”

The Brocks, along with older daughter Jackie and younger daughter Jillian, will leave this weekend, traveling with her sister, brother-in-law and their two kids. They'll all pile into a rented passenger van and make the roughly 15-hour trip to Philadelphia.

Getting tickets to see Pope Francis in Philadelphia wasn't easy for most people. There were only 10,000 tickets available for the pope's address at Independence Hall, the event Brock and her family will attend. The free tickets were gone in a matter of minutes.

There were similar circumstances surrounding the city's sale of regional rail tickets. The demand for the tickets during the pope's visit to Philadelphia were so high that the transportation authority created an online lottery.

With rail tickets not sold on a first- come, first-served basis, not everyone could purchase a pass, which is needed to travel within the city from 18 regional rail stations that weekend.

'We just kept plugging along and hoped that if it was meant to be, we would be able to get the tickets that we needed,” Brock said.

And it worked out for them. While the family couldn't secure enough tickets to attend every event Pope Francis will be at next weekend, they were able to get the passes they needed to see him speak Sept. 26 at Independence Hall.

'It clearly was meant to be because there were these different roadblocks - we needed to get rail passes, event tickets, reserved seating for the events, and we just kept getting everything we needed,” said Doug Brock. 'To me, that meant the trip was meant to be.”