Want to see Pope Benedict XVI when he celebrates Mass at Nationals Park in Washington on April 17? Best of luck to you.

While the new ballpark has a seating capacity for 41,000, those seats are being split among Catholics up and down the East Coast. The Catholic Diocese of Richmond's take is 400 tickets. The diocese, which covers three-fifths of the state, counts about 228,000 registered parishioners in its 153 parishes.

"We're trying to make it as fair as possible," said the Rev. Msgr. Thomas F. Shreve, the vicar general of the diocese and the person in charge of ticket disbursement. "You just tell people you only have 400 tickets, and we'll draw for them."

That's quite a change from 1979, the last time a pope -- John Paul II -- visited Washington. At the last stop on his six-city tour of the U.S., the pope performed an open Mass on the National Mall for about 175,000 people.

The Archdiocese of Washington is distributing about 45,000 tickets for the April 17 event and has set aside 14,000 seats for Catholic dioceses nationwide, archdiocese spokeswoman Susan Gibbs said. Of the tickets, 16,000 will go to the archdiocese's 148 parishes and missions, and 13,000 will go to clergy, Catholic high schools, campus ministries and volunteers, among others, in the archdiocese.

The biggest share of tickets headed out of Washington -- 6,000 -- will go to the Diocese of Arlington in Northern Virginia. The Archdiocese of Baltimore is receiving 2,500.

The Rev. Terry Specht of Holy Spirit Church in Annandale, whose congregation includes about 3,000 households, said the church has been collecting names over the past month and plans to give away the tickets through a lottery.

"That's how most of the parishes are doing it . . . finding out who's interested in going, and then letting the Lord decide," he said.

Those unable to get tickets for the Mass at the ballpark may have a chance to see the pope as he travels on at least two routes through the city, although the locations are still being determined, Gibbs said.

Contact Zachary Reid at (804) 775-8179 or zreid@timesdispatch.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.