Sainthood a step away

VATICAN CITY - Lauding John Paul II as a giant of 20th-century history as well as a hero of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict moved his towering predecessor one step closer to sainthood on Sunday in a celebratory mass that drew 1.5 million people to Rome.

"He was witness to the tragic age of big ideologies, totalitarian regimes, and from their passing, John Paul II embraced the harsh suffering ... of the transition of the modern age toward a new phase of history, showing constant concern that the human person be its protagonist," Benedict said, speaking before the largest crowd to swell St. Peter's Square since John Paul's funeral in 2005.

Benedict beatified John Paul, declaring him "blessed," meaning that he is able to be publicly venerated.

He also greeted Sister Marie Simone-Pierre, a French nun who said that she recovered from Parkinson's disease after praying to John Paul, a cure that Benedict has declared miraculous. Another miracle is required to confer sainthood.

During the mass, a tapestry of John Paul based on a 1989 photograph was unveiled from the balcony of St. Peter's. It shows the Polish pontiff with a twinkle in his eye and a slightly wry smile, the John Wayne of the modern papacy, both tough and tender.

'Impulse of hope'

Benedict praised John Paul for having carried out the vision of the liberalizing Second Vatican Council.

"He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress," Benedict said.

The festive mass could not but underscore the comparatively quiet and often troubled tenor of Benedict's six-year-old papacy. Benedict inherited a sex abuse scandal that emerged in the final decade of John Paul's reign, prompting some victims and critics to oppose Sunday's beatification and to question its speed, the fastest in modern times. Benedict waived the traditional five-year wait and began the beatification process just weeks after John Paul's death.

But in spite of the scandal and what some see as questions in the historical record, for many, the late memory of John Paul, who led the church for 26 years, remains very real.

"I miss him, so very much," said Cristiana Arru, a lawyer from Rome who grew up near the Vatican and came often to see the pope celebrate mass. Her eyes welled up with tears. "I still feel as though I've been orphaned."

Survived assassination attempt

In 2000, he asked pardon for the church's sins against Jews, women, heretics and minorities. He also was the first pope to visit a mosque and a synagogue.

He survived an assassination attempt by a Turkish gunman in 1981, a still-hazy chapter in Cold War history. He later forgave the gunman.

The Rev. John-Paul Gonzales, a California priest who attended Sunday's ceremony, said he considers himself "part of the John Paul II generation." He was born a year to the day after the pope was elected and was named for him, he said.

He could think of no other older person "who could have had such a strong impact on so many young generations," Gonzales said. "He was a grandfatherly figure for the world, a grandfather for my generation."

Benedict kissed John Paul's casket in St. Peter's Basilica, and was followed by scores of cardinals who did the same.