Vatican City, Oct 19: Both the poor and the powerful will have VIP seats in St Peter's Square today when Pope John Paul II leads a long ceremony to beatify Mother Teresa, further testing his frail health to honor the nun he so greatly admired. Now stooped and ailing, as was Mother Teresa in her final years of religious mission, John Paul was so impressed by her tireless devotion to the dying and destitute that he put her on the fast track toward sainthood after her death in Kolkata in 1997.
The pontiff, now 83, broke with the church practice of waiting five years after a candidate's death before starting the often decades-long process of beatification, the last step on the path to sainthood.
Following several days of long public ceremonies to mark the 25th anniversary of John Paul's pontificate, today's two-hour ceremony underscores the pope's determination to give the faithful fresh, and in this case, modern role models.
Police in Rome estimated as many as 300,000 people, one of the biggest crowds ever in St Peter's, could turn out.
City authorities have rerouted buses and erected barriers on streets leading to the Vatican in hopes of preventing traffic jams.
Bureau Report