Suffering pope pays tribute to suffering Capuchin monk

VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II, who himself once turned to Padre Pio seeking a cure for an ailing friend, raised the mystic Italian monk to sainthood Sunday to the cheers of some 200,000 pilgrims sweltering in temperatures near 100 degrees.

The crowd, jamming St. Peter's Square and nearby streets, was one of the biggest ever in this 23-year-old papacy. City authorities said some 500 pilgrims, some of whom fainted or suffered sunstroke, needed medical attention.

Pio died in 1968 after living for decades with inexplicable, bleeding wounds on his hands and feet, like the wounds Jesus suffered at crucifixion. In Italy, images of the bearded Capuchin monk with his hooded robe are everywhere from taxi dashboards to refrigerator magnets to key chains.

The 82-year-old pope, who suffers from symptoms of Parkinson's disease, was shaded from the scorching sun by a canopy over the altar erected on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica for the ceremony.

Still, John Paul struggled with the heat. As a sign of his frail health, he didn't distribute Communion to any of the faithful, who included a boy whose recovery in 2000 from a meningitis-induced coma in a hospital Pio founded in an Italian town was declared a miracle by the Vatican.

The boy's mother had prayed before Pio's tomb in the town of San Giovanni Rotondo for her son's recovery.

To become a saint, the Vatican requires certification of two miracles attributed to the figure's intercession after death. One miracle is required for beatification, the last formal step before sainthood, and that came after doctors advising the Vatican concluded there was no scientific explanation for the 1995 recovery of an Italian woman with a chest ailment.

After beatification, a second miracle is required, and the Vatican declared that one was the recovery of the boy.