Morning commuters joined by early morning Massgoers

Published: 2008-04-17

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Morning commuters found themselves surrounded on subway trains by a peculiar weekday morning sight -- thousands of people climbing aboard as early as 5 a.m. to attend a Mass at Nationals Park celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI. Men in clerical collars and women in habits, families dressed in their Sunday best and teens in Catholic school uniforms crowded onto jammed Metro trains to the stadium as soon as the subway system opened. By 7 a.m., steady streams of people moved up escalators and down streets to security checkpoints outside the newly opened baseball stadium. As people walked down Half Street to the gates, vendors selling buttons, pennants, T-shirts and photos of the pope competed for Massgoers' attention with dozens of volunteers in royal blue "pro-life" T-shirts who were handing out bumper stickers. Behind a police barricade, a handful of hopeful people held signs reading "need tickets," waving and calling out to passers-by as they left the subway station.

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