Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II:  Beatification: The late pope John Paul II is to be beatified in St Peter's Square in Rome among lot pomp and versus a background of persistent controversy. A lot of hundred thousand pilgrims, a lot of from the late pontiff's aboriginal Poland, are in Rome for the social occasion and will cram the square, the broad avenue that leads to the river Tiber, and besieging streets. Representatives of 5 royal families, admitting the Duke of Gloucester, are expected to hang. So too are at least six heads of governance and sixteen chiefs of state, including Robert Mugabe of Republic of Zimbabwe, who flew into Rome on Saturday. As part of an elaborate security system operation, the region roughly St Peter's Square had been cordoned off for more sixteen hours earlier the 1st pilgrims were given approach early this morning. Beatitude is the final tread on the road to sainthood, though not all those who are beatified are lastly canonised. Earlier conferring the title of "Blessed", the Roman Church requires evidence of at least one miracle. John Paul, who died in 2005, is deemed to have been responsible the incomprehensible cure of a French nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre. On Saturday, she was among the loudspeakers at the inauguration of an all-night prayer vigil in the Circus Maximums, a long; afford space in the centre of Rome that was once a stadium for chariot races. Pilgrims from roughly the global took heed to eulogies of the late pontiff from his former secretary Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz and press officeholder Joaquin Navarro-Valls. The charismatic John Paul is wide accredited with having hastened the collapse of communism in Europe. But a few in his chuch have questioned the speed with which such a controversial figure has been fast-tracked towards sainthood. John Paul is charged by victims' groupings of having turned a blind eye to sex abuse by his clergyman. Catholic traditionalists trust he built impossible compromises with additional religions; progressives argue he fatally undermined the innovative legacy of the 2nd Vatican Council Pope John Paul II