Register now for lottery to purchase discounted 2024 Eucharistic Congress tickets
OSV News — With contributions from Laura Keener, Editor
The Diocese of Covington has opened a lottery for its 250 discounted tickets to the 2024 Eucharistic Congress, July 17–21, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The congress is expected to draw more than 80,000 people, and organizers have compared the event to World Youth Day, with prayer and liturgies, catechesis for individuals and families, and a festival-like atmosphere. Registration is expected to fill quickly, Tim Glemkowski, executive director of the National Eucharistic Congress, told OSV News in an interview.
In the Diocese of Covington, the cost of the discounted tickets is $100 each. Households may now go online — www.covdio.org — to register their name and the names of household members for an opportunity to purchase tickets. Tickets are non-transferrable. Children under two do not require a ticket, so their names would not be required. Single adult households may include the name of a guest. Registering households must be located in the Diocese of Covington.
Launched last year, the National Eucharistic Revival is a three-year campaign by the U.S. bishops to increase the Catholic understanding of and devotion to Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. The Year of the National Eucharistic Congress and Missionary Sending 2024-25 is the third and final year of the U.S. bishops’ National Eucharistic Revival.
Part of the impetus for the campaign was a Pew Research Center study in the fall of 2019 that showed just 30 to 40 percent of Catholics understand and believe in the Real Presence. A more recent study conducted by the Center For Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University found that 50 percent of Catholics know the teaching on the Real Presence in the Eucharist and only 40 percent believe this teaching. The study also showed that only 15 percent of Catholics attend Sunday Mass on a weekly basis.
The revival opened June 19, 2022, on the solemnity of Corpus Christi, a feast that celebrates the Body and Blood of Christ. Many dioceses marked the day last year with Eucharistic processions.
Speaking to the media in November about the revival, Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, said the beauty and diversity expressed in those processions “capture what is at the heart of this movement, which is a movement that we seek to invite people to a transformative encounter with Christ in the Eucharist that they might be healed, unified and sent on mission.”
For additional information about the Eucharistic Congress and Revival or to purchase non-discounted tickets visit the Eucharistic Revival website, www.eucharisticcongress.org. The Messenger contributed to this article.
