Inspired by a thread about attending Westboro Baptist Church: Can I attend mass at St. Peter’s Basilica? Let’s say I’m a Catholic and I’m in Rome on Sunday morning; do I just waltz on in? Is seating first-come, first-served? Who celebrates Mass? Is there a regular parish priest, or does mass duty get rotated among the cardinals who happen to be in the Vatican at the time?
There’s no seating; it’s all standing-room only. And there are regular masses there, but it’s enough in demand that you’re certainly not likely to get a spot just by wandering in. I suspect that there’s some sort of reservation system where you get a ticket in advance.
You’d probably also have better chances on a weekday, not Sunday. Most Catholic churches have mass every day, and I would expect that St. Peter’s is no exception. But attendance at most daily masses is only a few percent of Sunday masses at the same church.
http://saintpetersbasilica.org/touristinfo.htm#mass
http://vatican.usembassy.gov/Vatican/Basilica.asp
There’s the mass schedule. They have six masses a day, seven on Sunday. Dress code is no shorts, no bare shoulders, no miniskirts.
I attended one on Easter Sunday, with Pope Paul VI, but I had to stand out in the plaza, under his apartment window, with about 20,000 others. And I’m not even Catholic.
Yes you can just walk in and attend.
Just for scope you have to understand the size of the Basilica and the number of churches in the area.
The Basilica is huge and has multiple little areas for mass’s to occur. It would be like walking onto a football field and seeing a podium at each corner and one on each side of the 50 yard line. For day to day activities there is a service of some type going on at one or more of those areas. You can just walk up and attend like everyone else.
For ‘important’ days like Easter, Christmas etc the mass is instead held outside in the equivalent of the parking lot anyone can walk up and listen to what the pope has to say via loudspeakers.
For your typical Roman there is a church within walking distance of their home. For weekly services they have no need or desire to head across town to the Basilica. The only people that tend to regularly attend mass’s there are tourists or church officials/staff.
Some years ago (mid-nineties) I attended Mass there, without any sort of ticket or reservation. Not only did I attend Mass, that particular Mass was celebrated by Pope John Paul II himself. It was crowded, certainly, but there was room.
The occasion for the Mass was the synod of bishops of Oceania, if I remember correctly.
So, unless things have changed, yes, you can go to Mass at St. Peter’s, no problem.
I’m in Rome at the moment, in fact!
Anyone is welcome to enter St Peter’s, Mass or not, as long as they are dressed appropriately - basically they want shoulders and knees covered. Men with longish walking shorts are admitted, as are women with capri pants or skirts that come just below the knee. The little shops just outside the Vatican gates are doing a booming business in this heat selling colorful scarves, which some women tourists buy to cover their shoulders. This is fine, but if you take the scarf off later you may get a stern word from a guard inside.
However, you can’t just waltz in. There is a security check. You walk through a metal detector like at an airport, and any bags you have with you are x-rayed - this is also when the guard looks at you to see if you fit the dress code. You can take in a water bottle and most other normal tourist things, but the parasols and umbrellas that many people are carrying around are not permitted. Note that this is only inside St Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican Museums, which include the Sistene Chapel - on St Peter’s Square outside, the dress code is not enforced and there is no security check on normal days. (During the Easter and Christmas seasons and other times when there are large gatherings on the Square, this changes.)
Yes, you could attend Mass here - they wouldn’t even ask your religion, to my knowledge, as long as you behaved respectfully. The only section of the basilica that is somewhat restricted is a small chapel for Perpetual Adoration of the Eucharist - no photography, no talking, and a guard outside the door to discourage tourists who just want to take a peek.
I’d add to what boytyperanma said that for Romans living in the city proper there are several churches within easy walking distance of their home, many of them as beautiful and historically significant as St Peter’s, so they would go to Mass at one of those.
Me too, I saw Mass with JPII, sometime in the nineties. It was standing room only but I saw him (barely). Been to Rome since and it’s what** flodnak** said.
I’m not a catholic, but I went to a service there in 2000. It was a small scale evening service in a small part of the basilica (I want to say a side chapel, but I’m not sure). I don’t think it was an actual mass, more like evensong (googling tells me the catholic equivalent is vespers, perhaps it was that).
The pope usually has a Wednesday “audience”. This is held in the morning on the steps or “porch” weather permitting. As an example of an event that involves the pope, we needed tickets (obtained free by emailing a local church well ahead of time, but we made a donation when we picked them up) to get a seat. Seats were set in the front semicircle of that big open space; behind it was a fence and the far half of the circular square (?) was no ticket standing room crowds.
it was the service for Sept.12, 2001 but he still drove down the steps and out to Gandolfo in an open Mercedes limo after the service. They drove the limo right up beside JPII’s seat because of his limited mobility. I think he passed about 20 feet away from me down the center aisle.
I hadn’t really attended church for 20+ years. There was no questions to get the tickets, nobody wanted to know if we were “entitled” or if it was appropriate. We just asked for the tickets and received them.
Most churches in Italy and the Vatican are open to the public. A few have admissions charges, they all have a spot for donations, and it’s pay to visit special places like the top of the dome in places like the Vatican and the Duomo of Florence. Most are wide open during the day, and only ask that you respect the place of worhip; the dress code mentioned, and no flash photos, be quiet during services, etc. It’s not like most places have such a crush of attendees that they seriously need to restrict access, and I can’t recall any church (except Mormons?) that refuses entry to walk-ins, even for services.
You can walk in and attend a service at any local Mormon church. The temples are closed to the general public.
Parts of temples are open to the public. I’ve been to a few of them, and I’m not Mormon. I don’t think they have regular Sunday services at temples anyway, though. They’re for other sorts of things.
The only restriction for non-Catholics at a Catholic mass in general is that you shouldn’t partake of the Eucharist. Everything else, though, is open to everyone.
It’s a mass if and only if there’s the consecration of the Eucharist: A priest would have stood up front with the bread and wine and said words to the effect of “this is the body” and “this is the blood”. Masses typically also include several readings from scripture, several songs and prayers, a sermon by the presiding priest discussing the Gospel, and so on, but those aren’t what makes it a mass.
our local Mormon temple was open to anyone before it was dedicated, they had a public open house. After that it’s only for Mormons. They hire only Mormons to do any work there such as electrical, plumbing etc. It’s a small temple, even smaller than the Mormon church next door to it. Maybe the rules are different for the bigger temples.
Oh, as to who celebrates Mass: St Peter’s is one of four Papal Basilicas. (There are many basilicas, all around the world: that just means a church the Pope has decided is important for some reason, such as being a place of pilgrimmage. There are only four Papal Basilicas, all in Rome.) This means that only the Pope and those designated by him can celebrate Mass there. In other words, it won’t be just any local priest who happens to be available, but someone who most likely already has some connection to the Vatican. As of this writing there are five daily Masses and seven on Sundays, so I’d imagine the list of priest so designated isn’t exactly short, to make sure there’s always someone available and leave wiggle room for illness, travel, and other responsibilities.
For the record: the four Papal Basilicas are St John Lateran, St Peter’s, St Paul Outside the Walls, and St Mary Major. Back in my Catholic school days we all seemed to be amused by the name of St Paul Outside the Walls. St John Lateran, not St Peter’s, is the oldest and is considered to have the highest status. However, St Peter’s is by far the most visited.
And just to add to this informative post, St. John Lateran is the cathedral of Rome, and thus is the seat for the pope as the “bishop of Rome.” Many people mistakenly assume that St. Peter’s is a cathedral, or even that any large church is a cathedral (Dan Brown does when he refers to the Roman church of Santa Maria del Popolo as a cathedral in Angels and Demons–nope, there’s only one Catholic cathedral in Rome, and that’s St. John Lateran). A bit of trivia that always impresses my art history students. 
A basilica can also refer to a church of a particular architectural style, regardless of importance. I think the usage for “church regarded as important for some reason” stems from the fact that St. Peter’s happens to be an (architectural) basilica: It was called “St. Peter’s Basilica”, and from that, people figured that “basilica” must mean important.
Guy goes to St Peter’s on Easter, hoping the Pope might personally give him a blessing. Puts on his finest suit to get noticed. Pope walks down the aisle; ignores the guy but does lean over and whisper in the ear of an obviously destitute bum.
The next year the same guy realizes what he needs to do to get noticed, so he dresses like a homeless fellow and sits near the aisle. To his growing excitement the Pope notices him and comes by to lean over and whisper in his ear. A personal blessing from the Pope!
“I thought I told you to get the hell outta here last year…”
Oh yeah; re the OP: You can get into almost any Catholic or Protestant service in almost any church. Ditto for most Bhuddist and Hindu ones; you have to know some protocol for Islamic ones.
If there are any admission charges, it’s as a “tourist visitor” and it involves either access to parts of the church a non-tourist wouldn’t access (a small museum, the cloisters, etc.), a guide, entering during off-service hours and being allowed to exclaim loudly without being sushed by every old lady in a ten-mile radius… If you’re visiting it as a church (i.e, for services), there can not be a fee.
I know what a mass is, I just can’t remember if the service I attended was a mass because it was ten years ago. It was also in Italian (which I don’t speak), but knowing a smattering of church Latin, some French and knowing the general contents of church services, I remember having a rough idea what was going on for at least some of the service.
Probably it wasn’t, because I don’t specifically remember taking communion. At the time I had no idea how strict catholics are about non-catholics taking it (I grew up in the Church of England, which is much less strict), so I probably would have accepted it if offered. Now I know better.