Sherwood Park parish hosts Papal mass livestream

While thousands watched the Papal mass at Commonwealth, around 100 people watched the historic occasion through a livestream at a church in Sherwood Park.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish hosted the event to help ensure anyone who wanted to watch Pope Francis' liturgy could still experience the special occasion.

"For people that couldn't attend at the Commonwealth for various reasons, like it could be mobility issues or just that they didn't want crowds," said Rita Sandmaier, a parishioner.

"So we thought at least we can show the video and allow them to participate in this special mass with the Pope," Sandmaier added.

Almost four decades ago, Sandmaier was in the crowd when Pope John Paul II was in Alberta for his Papal visit.

"It was just such a grace-filled event," she said.

For this visit, she thought it was important to allow everyone the opportunity to join in and hear the Pope's words.

"To (help) engage the parish in this whole journey of the Pope coming to Canada and also to, I believe, educate us in terms of what happened to the Indigenous People," Sandmaier said. "So it all goes together that we're here to journey with the people."

Rod Randolph attended the viewing and was eager to hear the Pope's message of reconciliation and hope.

"We need to learn from it and hopefully can become better as a result of it," Randolph told CTV News Edmonton. "We do a lot of harmful things to one another, in all sorts of arenas, and this is one of them for sure.

"I think we need to let the people that we've hurt know that we're sorry, we apologize, we want to learn from it, and we want to be better moving forward," he added. "We have to be better as a result of this."