Pope John Paul remembered on first anniversary of death

Mourners gather in front of St. Peter's basilica during a special mass at the Vatican. Picture / Reuters

VATICAN CITY - Tens of thousands of people from around the world flocked to a candlelight service at the Vatican on Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul and pray that he be made a saint soon.

They came from the late Pope's native Poland, from the United States, Asia and Italy to pray the rosary and listen to Pope Benedict deliver an address after a moment of silence at 9.37pm (7.37am Monday NZ time), the moment that he died a year ago.

A sea of Polish flags filled the square as dusk settled and the some of the late Pope's countrymen held up a huge banner from his home town of Wadowice in southern Poland.

Dozens of banners bore the name of Solidarnosc (Solidarity), the free trade union that John Paul supported in the 1980s and whose rise led to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

"We are here to give tribute. It is a must for us to be here because being here in St Peter's Square is us giving him our thanksgiving for all the wonderful things he did," said Richard Ricafente, a man in his 20s from the Philippines.

Young people read excerpts from the late Pope's writings, including some of his poetry, and listened to spiritual songs as they exchanged personal memories of the late pontiff.

Nuns in black habits and Franciscan monks in brown robes joined young people in jeans. During the day many of them had waited together for hours to visit John Paul's tomb in St Peter's Basilica.

"I think he was a holy Pope and I think the process for sainthood should be speeded up," said Giuseppe Decore, an Italian lawyer.

Many said they would be praying that the late Pope could be made a saint soon. Several in the evening crowd held up a banner reading "Santo Subito" ("Make him a saint now"), a repeat of banners held aloft at his funeral a year ago.

"I don't have the words to express my feelings. He was not only our father but a father to the whole world," said Hanna Ulatowska, a 29-year-old flower shop owner who came from Warsaw.

The feeling was the same at the Lagiewniki shrine near Krakow, where thousands of Poles, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, attended a memorial mass said by the late Pope's private secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz.

"I pray every day so that John Paul II is made a saint. He is a man that changed Poland, changed me, changed the whole world. He was already a saint in his lifetime," said Katarzyna Malec, a pensioner from Krakow.

Last May, Pope Benedict put his predecessor on the fast track to sainthood by dispensing with Church rules that normally impose a five-year waiting period after a candidate's death before the procedure that leads to sainthood can even start.

Church officials are investigating the healing of a French nun whose symptoms of Parkinson's disease disappeared after she prayed to the Pope. This may be the miracle the Church would need to beatify the Pope, the last step before sainthood.

Speaking hours earlier at his noon address, Benedict recalled how his predecessor had "left a deep mark on the history of the Church and of humanity." "John Paul died as he lived, moved by an indomitable courage of faith," Benedict told pilgrims.

Benedict, who will say a memorial mass on Monday afternoon, recalled how much the Pope suffered without complaint and that John Paul died in the same apartment from where he was speaking.

- REUTERS