Perilous
Times
Rome scrambles to ready for 2 million Pope Worshiping
Pilgrims
By FRANCES D'EMILIO
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 15, 2011; 2:18 PM
VATICAN CITY -- Crowd control experts were rushing to ready Rome
for an estimated 2 million pope worshiping pilgrims for Pope John
Paul II's beatification on May 1, when the city will be thronged
with Easter week tourists.
No tickets or invitations will be necessary - as many faithful who
want to be there to see the Polish-born pontiff beatified, the
last formal step before possible sainthood, can come, a Vatican
spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said Saturday.
"We don't give estimates" of the size of the crowds who will come,
Benedettini. But Italian news reports say authorities in Rome were
planning for 2 million pilgrims.
With St. Peter's Square and the boulevard leading from the Tiber
to the Vatican able to hold a few hundred thousand people, large
video screens are expected to be set up in nearby streets so the
spillover crowd can watch the ceremony led by Pope Benedict XVI.
The last turnout so big in Rome was the 3 million mourners for
John Paul's funeral and other ceremonies following his death in
April 2005 after he struggled for years with Parkinson's disease.
Even the more popular ceremonies in his papacy didn't come near to
drawing so many faithful. When an ailing John Paul beatified
Mother Teresa in 2003 in St. Peter's Square, 300,000 pilgrims
attended. Padre Pio's sainthood ceremony, led by John Paul in June
2002, saw about 200,000 faithful swelter the square in one of the
larger turnouts in his 26-year-long papacy.
In 2000, about 700,000 young Catholics streamed into Rome for
church World Youth Day events stretched out over several days at
locations throughout the city as well as at the Vatican.
La Stampa, an Italian daily, said the national civil protection
agency personnel hope to rein in any chaos by meeting pilgrims'
buses and channeling the faithful down selected streets to the
square.
Easter falls on April 24, meaning Rome's hotels will be brimming
with Easter week tourists, when many students are on school break
and families pour into Italy, so organizers might look to Romans
to open their homes to pilgrims.
May 1 is also national labor day, and traditional May Day concerts
near St. John in Lateran Basilica usually draw hundreds of
thousands of young people from throughout Italy to enjoy the free
music.
On Friday, Benedict set the date for beatification after declaring
that a French nun's recovery from Parkinson's disease was the
miracle needed for John Paul to be beatified. A second miracle,
attributed to John Paul's intercession after the beatification
ceremony, will be needed for the widely popular pontiff to be
honored with sainthood.
Once he is beatified, John Paul will be given the title "blessed"
and can be publicly venerated.
Veneration is the word commonly used to refer to that worship
given to saints, either directly or through images or relics,
which is different in kind from the divine worship given to God
only, according to reference work, the Catholic Encyclopaedic
Dictionary.
John Paul's entombed remains, currently in the grotto underneath
St. Peter's Basilica, will be moved upstairs to a chapel just
inside a main entrance for easier access by throngs of admirers.