Pope John Paul beatified before huge crowd

VATICAN CITY, (Reuters) – The late Pope John Paul  moved a major step closer to sainthood today at a joyous  ceremony that drew more than a million people, the largest crowd  in Rome since his funeral six years ago.
“From now on Pope John Paul shall be called ‘blessed'”, Pope  Benedict, wearing resplendent white and gold robes, solemnly  proclaimed in Latin, establishing that his predecessor’s feast  day would be October 22, the day of the inauguration of John  Paul’s history-making pontificate in 1978.
To the cheers of the huge crowd, a tapestry showing a  smiling John Paul was unveiled seconds after Benedict read the  proclamation.
St Peter’s Square was jam-packed and the crowd stretched as  far back as the Tiber River, more than half a kilometre (550  yards) away. The throng of devotees, many carrying national  flags and singing songs, had moved towards the Vatican area from  all directions from before dawn to get a good spot for the Mass.
Police estimated the crowd at more than a million people.  Many camped out during the night in the square, which was  bedecked with posters of the late pope and one of his most  famous sayings, “Do not be afraid!”
In his homily, Benedict noted that the late Pope, whom he  praised as having had “the strength of a titan” and who gave  millions of people “the strength to believe”, had blessed crowds  thousands of times from his window overlooking the same square.
“Bless us now,” Benedict said.
Many of the participants were from John Paul’s native  Poland. Dozens of red and white Polish flags bobbed above the  crowd and a cheer went up when a group of Poles released a large  banner reading “Thank You, God”, held aloft by balloons.
“We were at the funeral and we just had to be here to see  him beatified,” said Janusc Skibinski, 40, who drove 29 hours  with his family from their home near the border with Belarus.
A place of honour was reserved for Sister Marie Simon-Pierre  Normand, a French nun who suffered from Parkinson’s disease but  whose inexplicable cure has been attributed to John Paul’s  intercession with God to perform a miracle, thus providing the  grounds for his beatification.
After the proclamation, Normand held up a silver reliquary  with a vial of blood taken from the pope in the last few days of  his life in case it was needed for a transfusion.
The Vatican will have to attribute another miracle to John  Paul’s intercession after the beatification in order for him to  be declared a saint.
The pope was beatified on the day the Church celebrates the  Feast of Divine Mercy, which this year fell on May 1, coinciding  with the most important workers’ holiday in the communist world.  The timing was ironic, given the role of the Polish pope in the  fall of communism in his homeland and across eastern Europe.
DELEGATIONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Some 90 official delegations from around the world,  including members of five European royal families and 16 heads  of state, attended the beatification.
They included Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has  been widely criticised for human rights abuses in his country.  Mugabe is banned from travelling to the European Union, but the  Vatican — a sovereign state — is not a member of the bloc.
Pope John Paul’s coffin was exhumed on Friday from the  crypts below St Peter’s Basilica and will be placed in front of  the main altar. It will remain there and the basilica will  remain open until all visitors who want to view it have done so.
It will then be moved to a new crypt under an altar in a  side chapel near Michelangelo’s statue of the Pieta. The marble  slab that covered his first burial place will be sent to Poland.
John Paul’s beatification has set a new speed record for  modern times, taking place six years and one month after his  death on April 2, 2005.
While the overwhelming majority of Catholics welcome it, a  minority are opposed, with some saying it happened too fast.
Liberals in the church say John Paul was too harsh with  theological dissenters who wanted to help the poor, particularly  in Latin America. Some say he should be held ultimately  responsible for sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the  Catholic church, because they occurred or came to light when he  was in charge.
Ultra-Conservatives say he was too open towards other  religions and that he allowed the liturgy to be “infected” by  local cultures, such as African dancing, on his trips abroad.