Before one of the largest crowds ever to fill the Vatican area, Pope John Paul yesterday made a saint of Padre Pio, a 20th century mystic monk who is said to have borne the bleeding wounds of Christ.
In sweltering heat topping 33 degrees C in the shade, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world thronged St Peter's Square and all the streets in the vicinity for the ceremony in front of Christendom's largest church.
Italian civil protection squads distributed about one million bottles of water and firemen hosed down the crowd to bring some cool relief.
Cheers and applause went up in Rome and throughout Italy when the 82-year-old Pope, wearing gold and white vestments, proclaimed Pio, who was born in the southern Italian city of Pietrelcina, a saint.
"We include the blessed Pio of Pietrelcina in the annals of saints and we establish that throughout the whole Church he be devotedly honoured among the saints," the Pope said, reading a Latin formula in a trembling voice.
Fireworks went off in broad daylight in the southern town of San Giovanni Rotondo, where Pio lived most of his life in a monastery and which is now a pilgrim boomtown with a multimillion-euro economy that revolves around Pio's cult.
Huge screens were placed along the long, broad boulevard that leads from the River Tiber to the Vatican so that pilgrims, many of them using umbrellas and hats to ward off the sun, could follow the ceremony.
Even VIPs in the front rows, including former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, wore fisherman-style hats because of the heat.
To satisfy the huge crowd, the Pope was driven in an open jeep down the long boulevard from the Vatican to the river and back - a total distance of about a kilometre - so that many people could see him.
The Pope appeared to hold up well during the two and a half hours of ceremony.
The Pope, who is said to be particularly devoted to the Franciscan Capuchin monk who died in 1968 at the age of 81, presided at a solemn ceremony to canonise one of the 20th century's most popular Roman Catholic figures.
Padre Pio was said to have wrestled with the devil in his monastery cell, to have predicted events in the lives of visitors, to have known what penitents were about to confess and to have been seen in two places at the same time.
In his homily, John Paul recalled that he had visited Padre Pio when the future Pope was a young priest just after the Second World War. The Pope said he had had the "privilege" to be confessed by Padre Pio.
The Pope has in the past denied reports that Padre Pio predicted he would someday be elected Pope.
Before the ceremony, police warned pilgrims to be on the watch for pickpockets, whose prayers also seemed to be answered by the size of the crowd.
It also was a day made in heaven for souvenir sellers, who lined the streets to hawk Padre Pio hand fans, Padre Pio coffee cups, Padre Pio leather bags and Padre Pio cigarette lighters.
Padre Pio is credited with interceding in at least two miracles, the number required for the church to confer sainthood.
Before his beatification - the penultimate step before sainthood - he was credited with the medically inexplicable healing of an Italian woman who had a lung disease and prayed to Padre Pio.
The second miracle was the curing of an 11-year-old Italian boy, Matteo Collella who had meningitis when he was nine and whose mother prayed to Padre Pio while her son was in a coma. The boy attended the ceremony.
The bearded Pio lived most of his life in a monastery where people had to make appointments to have him hear their confessions.
He had wounds in the hands, feet and side that corresponded with the wounds Christ suffered at the Crucifixion. He used brown fingerless gloves to absorb the blood and cover the wounds except when he said Mass.
Doctors were at a loss to explain the wounds, which never produced gangrene or infection.