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“Wrapped in rain slickers and plastic garbage bags, an estimated 350,000 people celebrated mass with Pope John Paul II at Jarry Park yesterday in the largest religious gathering in Canadian history.”

That was how we began the front-page article that accompanied this photograph on Sept. 12, 1984.

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The shot by Richard Arless Jr. shows just how large that gathering was. The three-hour mass was accompanied by a steady drizzle, but that didn’t chase away many attendees, we reported.

The Montreal leg of the papal visit, the first by a Pope to Canada, also included a stop at Notre-Dame Basilica earlier that day. There he was greeted by 2,500 schoolchildren chanting “JP! JP!” and “Viva il Papa!” The night before, a 16-year-old Céline Dion sang for His Holiness at Olympic Stadium in front of 65,000 youth. He had arrived in the Popemobile, a specially modified GMC Sierra, and left after two standing ovations and the presentation of a pair of doves by Canadian Olympians Sylvie Bernier and Alwyn Morris.

The front page article Sept. 12 was part of six pages of coverage in the Montreal Gazette that included the reasons for his visit, discussion of the role of women in the church, speculation about what the pontiff was eating (scant detail except for the fact that he liked apples and Canadian beer) and a photograph of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau stifling a yawn at Jarry Park.

The Pope’s Montreal sojourn was an early stop in a 12-day cross-Canada visit that year. John Paul made two other visits to Canada, in 1987 and 2002. He died in 2005.