THOUSANDS OF tickets for major events during Pope Benedict’s visit are being returned to organisers because dioceses have not found enough people to take up their allocation.

At least seven dioceses have each sent back hundreds of tickets, known as “pilgrim invitations”, for the Hyde Park prayer vigil and beatification Mass of Cardinal Newman in Cofton Park, Birmingham.

Each diocese in England, Wales and Scotland has been allocated a number of places at the prayer vigil and the beatification based on their Catholic population and Mass attendance.

All have been asked to inform visit organisers of numbers attending. However, for example, only 500 of the 1,900 places allocated to the Diocese of Nottingham for the Hyde Park vigil have been taken up, while in Cardiff only 332 of the 1,078 places allocated for the same event are being used.

Organisers say that any tickets not taken up will be re-allocated and this week the Archdiocese of Birmingham announced that up to 5,000 more tickets were now available for the beatification. A spokesman explained that initially it had been oversubscribed.

So far, the most enthusiastic responses to attend the two papal events have been from Birmingham and Westminster, where there is a 2,000-long waiting list.

But Southwark, one of the country’s largest archdioceses, while hitting its target of 11,000 for Hyde Park, has only filled two-thirds of a possible 3,400 for the beatification. And in the Diocese of Brentwood, which covers east London and Essex, more than 3,000 places for the Hyde Park prayer vigil have not been taken up. Organisers have planned for 65,000 pilgrims to come to Cofton Park and 80,000 to Hyde Park.

Ten thousand tickets for Newman’s beatification event have been set aside for the Birmingham Oratory, which will include Oratorians from abroad and the official pilgrimage from the US, whose members are paying more than $3,000 (£1,900) each for an eight-day trip, including flights and accommodation, with the Cofton Park ceremony as its highlight.

A number of reasons have been cited by diocesan coordinators for the lack of take-up of places, including the fact that numbers for the events were being finalised at a time when many people were on holiday and that others were put off by the long journey to attend the beatification.

Patricia Landers, helping coordinate the visit in the Archdiocese of Cardiff, explained that elderly pilgrims had been put off attending the beatification because they had been told that it would require up to a two-mile walk to reach the venue from the car park.

A spokesman for the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales stressed that there was not a lack of demand for places and that tickets would simply be reallocated. “It is a question of matching supply with demand,” he said.

Last week it was also reported that in Scotland some parishes were returning up to half their allocated tickets for the papal Mass at Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, where there is a capacity of 100,000.

The entourage accompanying Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Britain next month is to stay at a luxury hotel in central London, writes Christopher Lamb.

The group, known as the seguido, numbers roughly 30 and includes cardinals, priests and bodyguards.