Waves of refugees at the Shore

CAPE MAY - It was a respectful, but smaller than anticipated, group of worshipers that gathered in Convention Hall here Sunday to view Pope Francis' public Mass on a giant screen, the culmination of a Jersey Shore "Pope Weekend."

"We knew we needed to get away from all that," Lisa Bialy, 52, of Mount Ephraim, said of the crowds gathered 85 miles away on the Parkway in Philadelphia. "I don't even want to think of what it was like to get around up there. We just wanted to get down here and avoid it all."

Still, Bialy and her boyfriend, Jim Schaffer, also of Mount Ephraim, took time out from strolling around Cape May and catching a classic-car show in Wildwood to watch the Mass simulcast.

"This is another attraction for the weekend," said Schaffer. "The pope is the most famous person on the planet, so we wanted to be here - but not up there - to see it."

The hall seats 830 people, and about 700 tickets were distributed.

The simulcast was one of the final activities of papal events up and down the Shore that included pope-related raffles at church festivals and broadcasts of the festivities in Philadelphia on wide-screen televisions at bars and restaurants. And there were pope drink specials.

Cape May Brewing Co. released a limited-edition beer called "You Only Pope Once," while Flying Fish Brewing Co. of Somerdale, which often takes inspiration for its brews from the beach, for the occasion created "Nope."

"I think everybody wants to get in on the act somehow," said Shelly Wirth, manager at Westy's Irish Pub in North Wildwood, a place that was inundated over the weekend with its own crowds, thanks to the Irish Fall Festival that drew tens of thousands - mostly Irish Catholics from Philadelphia - who celebrate the event annually during the last weekend in September.

Although some organizers feared that the pope's visit to Philadelphia would keep many of the Irish festival faithful away this year, it was clear by Sunday afternoon that the opposite was happening.

And that may have been thanks to the Cape May County Tourism Department's boosting its fall advertising budget to target pilgrims of a different stripe who wanted to avoid the city crowds and traffic.

Elizabeth Walton, 74, of Smithville, Atlantic County, said she and her husband, Bud, 78, had obtained tickets to attend the Mass in Philadelphia but opted instead to drive to Cape May and watch it on the big screen.

"It was going to be an hour's drive in either direction," Walton said. "But with that drive to Philly, there was a lot more involved. We just didn't think we had the stamina to face it all. They kind of scared us away, with all the restrictions and how early you had to get there and all the problems getting in and out of the city. We just feel blessed that we had the option to come here."

The Rev. Francis W. Danella, pastor of Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish in Cape May, asked that the crowd gathered for the Convention Hall event on Sunday "maintain a reverential posture" during the broadcast - and that the group pray for the pontiff.

"The pope has repeatedly asked that we pray for him, and I would ask that we all pray for him and his ministry," Danella said.

Contact Jacqueline L. Urgo at 609-652-8382 or jurgo@phillynews.com @JacquelineUrgo