When more than 600 people from the Archdiocese of Louisville take their seats in New York’s Yankee Stadium April 20, they’ll notice a good many reminders of home.

Along with the four other dioceses to be honored at the 2:30 p.m. papal Mass, the Archdiocese of Louisville’s coat of arms will be displayed on a huge banner. And the archdiocese will be represented during the Mass in other ways as well, according to Dr. Brian Reynolds, chancellor and chief administrative officer.

Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz and the archbishops of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore will concelebrate the Mass with Pope Benedict XVI.

Two Archdiocese of Louisville seminarians — Christopher Rhodes and Matthew Hardesty — have been asked to be altar servers at the Mass. Eighteen archdiocesan priests will help distribute Communion, and they will wear the vestments purchased for the archdiocese’s bicentennial celebration.

Four archdioceses celebrating bicentennials this year — Louisville, Boston, New York and Philadelphia — and Baltimore, the country’s first diocese and the first U.S. archdiocese, are being honored at the Mass in Yankee Stadium.

All in all, the Archdiocese of Louisville will be well represented at both the papal Mass in New York and during the pope’s visit to Washington, D.C., Reynolds said.

Archbishop Kurtz and his predecessor, retired Archbishop Thomas C. Kelly, were scheduled to attend the meeting of the pope and the bishops of the United States yesterday afternoon, April 16, in Washington. Archbishop Kurtz also was invited to participate in the April 16 welcoming ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House.

Father Joseph Atcher, executive director of the archdiocesan Office of Lifelong Formation and Education, and Bellarmine University President Joseph McGowan will be among representatives of Catholic schools and universities meeting with the pope at 5 p.m. today, April 17.

There will be 10 priests from the archdiocese attending the papal Mass at 10 a.m. April 17 at the new Washington Nationals’ baseball park, Reynolds noted.

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the regular contact papal Mass planners have had with the archdiocese to make sure we will have equal involvement with other dioceses that are much larger — and much closer to New York,” Reynolds noted.

The archdiocese will also be receiving some national media attention as well. CNN will be sending a reporter to travel from Louisville to New York with a bus carrying a group of young people and Carole Goodwin, the archdiocese director of youth ministry.

“We’ve also been really pleased with the decision to distribute (papal Mass) tickets through the parishes,” he added. “Some dioceses have chosen to a hold a diocesan lottery” as a means of determining who can attend the Mass.

The Archdiocese of Louisville chose to give each parish four Mass tickets; it was up to the parish to determine how the tickets were allotted.

The result, Reynolds said, is that the contingent to traveling to New York from Louisville will “represent every corner of our archdiocese.”

About 160 people from the archdiocese will be leaving Louisville International Airport at 7 a.m. April 20 on a chartered Boeing 737 airliner. Nine busloads of people from the archdiocese will have left by 8 a.m. the previous morning from five locations.

There will be three buses leaving from St. Margaret Mary Church, 7813 Shelbyville Road; three from the Flaget Center, 1935 Lewiston Drive; and one each from St. James Church in Elizabethtown, Ky., the Basilica of St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral in Bardstown, Ky., and St. Augustine Church in Lebanon, Ky.

Those traveling to New York City by bus — expected to total more than 400 people — will spend Saturday night at either the Sheraton Parsippany in Parsippany, N.J., or the West Governor Morris in Morristown, N. J. Whether arriving by air or by bus, those attending the papal Mass must be in their seats at Yankee Stadium by noon.

They will be treated to a “Concert of Hope,” featuring Harry Connick Jr., Jose Feliciano, Marcello Giordano, Stephanie Mills and Dana, which will run from noon to 2 p.m. The Mass will begin at 2:30 p.m.

Reynolds said that about 60 people are traveling to New York in their own cars, though how they’ll get to Yankee Stadium is uncertain, since security measures are tight and roadways in and out of the stadium area will be used by approved vehicles only.

All the details — and especially the distance — have made planning for the papal event if not complicated, at least time-consuming.

“What makes it complicated for our diocese is that there is a large group of people traveling more than 14 hours to attend the Mass,” Reynolds noted. “There will be other large groups from the other dioceses, but they all live a lot closer to New York than we do.”

Everyone attending had to submit personal information to the U.S. Secret Service, and each person who has received a ticket to the Mass will be assigned a seat. “Our job is to make sure the right person with the right ticket gets to the right seat,” he added.