Remembering pope’s 1984 visit to Canada

Pope John Paul II’s visit to Canada in September 1984 was a celebration of faith with Canada’s Catholics rather than a political appearance, even though it was in the midst of a national election.

During the visit, the first ever by a pope to Canada, John Paul saw 10 cities in 12 days and made time to meet with the young, the handicapped, the weak and the old. He met with the Huron Indians in Ontario and Eskimos in Alberta.

The 64-year-old pontiff came at the invitation of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. While in Canada he celebrated Mass at Quebec City, Montreal and Three Rivers, Quebec; St. John’s, Newfoundland; Halifax, Nova Scotia; Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Edmonton, Alberta; Vancouver, British Columbia, and within a few hours of much of Maine at Moncton, New Brunswick.

It was a bleak day when the pontiff was in Moncton, with a cold wind and periodic rain, even during the outdoor Mass. He was in the city only seven hours.

John Paul was healthy then, his voice strong no matter which language he spoke during his sermon. People from the province’s 220 Catholic parishes cheered as the pope entered Our Lady of Assumption Cathedral in Moncton.

Some 100,000 people, about one-third of what was expected, turned out under menacing clouds to hear the leader of the Roman Catholics ask them to nurture justice and to remove themselves from those who would seek to injure the marginal and the poor of the world.

Among those at the Mass were nine priests from Maine’s St. John Valley and 70 seminarians from Cheshire, Conn., who slept on concrete floors at Moncton Community College while in the city. Twenty buses carried people attending from Maine. A group as large, if not larger, had gone to Quebec City the previous Sunday to see the pope there.

The Rev. Leopold Nicknair, pastor of St. Louis Church at Fort Kent, was at Moncton. He also had traveled to Quebec City for the pope’s appearance.

“He gives, he brings a lot of hope to the people,” Nicknair said after the Mass, adding that the pope didn’t go around issues, he faced them head-on.

“We [the nine priests] agreed that he really brings hope with his talks and by mixing with the people,” he said. “I listened to the people and that’s what they were saying. He is a sign of hope.”

John Paul celebrated Mass with 30 Canadian bishops.

The pope likened his lesson taken from early Catholic history to the Acadians of New Brunswick and northern Maine. He asked worshippers to “respect others, … respect human rights, … refuse violence … and show concern for the less fortunate and the marginal.”

People at the 21/2-hour Mass in a natural amphitheater had arrived hours ahead of time. Some waited for more than six hours along a parade route from the city to a former farm. The visit to the French city of 58,000 people brought on the largest security effort in the province.

The pope praised Acadians for their devotion to Mary and their tenacity despite severe problems throughout their history.

John Paul was interrupted more than six times by applause during his 20-minute sermon.