Free tickets to Pope John Paul II’s...

Free tickets to Pope John Paul II’s Mass at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Sept. 15 will be divided among Roman Catholics in the host Los Angeles Archdiocese and in the dioceses of Orange, San Diego, San Bernardino and Reno-Las Vegas, church officials announced this week.

An allocation system for some of the nearly 100,000 seats is still being worked out by an inter-diocesan committee, said Father Arthur A. Holquin, a priest of the Orange diocese who is in charge of the Mass in the Coliseum.

Until now, it was not known whether the Rose Bowl or the Coliseum would be chosen for the Pope’s largest event during his two-day stay in the Los Angeles area.

Coliseum Commission President William Robertson said in a news conference after the site announcement that he thinks the Coliseum’s parking facilities, “more comfortable seating” and location in the City of Los Angeles were determining factors.

The archdiocese will be charged $125,000 by the Coliseum for the security, maintenance, personnel and other costs, Robertson said. “The Coliseum does not stand to make any substantial profit,” he said.

The 6 p.m. Mass will contain elements in both English and Spanish, Holquin said. The precise theme is still undetermined, he said, but the liturgy will reflect the church in Southern California and have participants from each diocese. Another Mass the next day at Dodger Stadium will convey the themes of ethnic diversity and refugees.

The high mark for attendance at the Coliseum was 135,254 on the closing day of a Billy Graham evangelistic crusade in 1963, but Coliseum General Manager Glenn Hon said that fire regulations now limit the crowd to 100,000. About 8,500 seats will be set up on the floor of the Coliseum, but a tarpaulin will protect the grass, Hon said.

DATES

Enthusiasts for the United Nations-designated International Year of Peace, which ends Wednesday, will gather at noon (Greenwich time) that day for simultaneous meditations and prayers at various places around the world. For the West Coast, that means at 4 a.m. Wednesday. One of the Southern California sites will be the Long Beach Convention Center, where the gathering will be a prelude to the 13th International Human Unity Conference. Speakers at the conference, which runs New Year’s Eve through next Saturday, include a variety of spiritual, educational, political and entertainment figures. Religious speakers include Coptic Bishop Antonius Markos, vice president of the All-Africa Council of Churches; Sant Thakar Singh, a disciple of the late Sant Kirpal Singh, who started the first such conference, and the Revs. Sharron Stroud and Peggy Bassett, pastors of large Religious Science congregations in San Diego and Huntington Beach, respectively.

PEOPLE

Artist Joseph Young’s design using six 18-foot-tall granite columns has been selected for a major memorial to the 6 million Jews who perished in the Nazi era. The monument, approved for the Pan Pacific Park, state-owned land administered by Los Angeles County, was conceived by the American Congress of Jews from Poland and Survivors of Concentration Camps. Otto Schirn, president of the organization, said private sources will fund the $1.1-million project. Young, whose designs grace many Los Angeles synagogues and public buildings, said the open center of the monument will suggest a seventh “invisible” column representing Jewish survivors.

Presbyterian minister Paul M. Martin, 48, has been elected to a two-year term as president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Los Angeles, an organization of clergy from 65 urban churches. Martin, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church for 18 years, succeeds the Rev. Matthew Richardson.

MEDIA

A plea comes from Cal Samra, editor of The Joyful Noiseletter, a religious humor publication described in an Associated Press story printed in The Times last Saturday. Samra said that ordinarily he would be overjoyed that his phone rang off the hook with inquiries, “but my wife just had a baby a few days ago, and we’re not getting much sleep as it is.” Samra welcomes mail at the Fellowship of Merry Christians, P.O. Box 668, Kalamazoo, Mich. 49005. Annual membership dues are $15.