Hospitals are sending patients home to clear beds ahead of Pope’s visit

Hospitals are in the process of discharging patients ahead of next weeks's papal visit.

Beds are being freed up in hospitals around Dublin as the city prepares to welcome Pope Francis on Saturday and Sunday week, 25 and 26 of August. Hospitals in the capital were asked to review their capacity in the run up to the visit, when hundreds of thousands of visitors are set to descend.. With admissions expected to rise during the visit, a number of patients are now being sent home from hospital "where medically appropriate" to make beds available, the HSE told Independent.ie. All 500,000 tickets for the Papal Mass at the Phoenix Park on Sunday 26 August have been booked out. A temporary morgue will be set up in the park, Gardaí said earlier this month. Given the large numbers due to gather and taking into account their older age profile, authorities are preparing for people to die from natural causes such as heart attacks at the event. There will be hundreds of Gardaí on duty in the Phoenix Park on the day of the event to help with crowd control and stewarding. Armed members of the force, bomb sniffer dogs and snipers will also be deployed. Pope Francis is coming to Dublin for the World Meeting of Families. It's the first papal visit to Ireland since 1979, when Pope John Paul II made the trip from Rome.