Wondering what the final tab for the Pope's whirlwind two-day visit to Philadelphia was?
The city should know by next month, officials say. Per the city's contract with the World Meeting of Families, which was the event host for the papal visit, the city will send an invoice to the World Meeting by Nov. 1, according to the City Controller's Office.
From there, the World Meeting of Families has 30 days to pay up, a spokesman for the Controller's Office said. Ahead of Pope Francis' visit, the city estimated costs at roughly $12 million, including nearly $5 million for police and almost $4 million for the fire department, including emergency medical services.
Mayoral spokesman Mark McDonald told NBC10 it's too soon to tell whether that $12 million estimate was on point, but that the city had hoped for the final bill to come in lower than that.
He said post-papal cleanups, aside from some landscaping work that will likely be done in the spring, are mostly complete as far as his office knows.
He said the city expects the biggest papal visit expense to be for police.
McDonald also said that several city departments involved with the papal visit are working on an "after-action review" on the visit that will generate an internal report sometime in November.
"The various departments are looking at what happened, what didn't happen, what went right, what didn't go right, that sort of thing," McDonald said.
He said he expects the city will be able to share results of that internal review next month.
