Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have jammed St Peter's Square and the streets around it for the beatification of Pope John Paul II, a joyful celebration aimed at giving a morale boost to a church scarred by the priestly sex abuse scandal.
The scene at dawn around the Vatican was reminiscent of John Paul's final days in 2005, when hundreds of thousands of pilgrims staged around-the-clock vigils beneath his studio window.
Thousands of pilgrims, many of them from John Paul's native Poland, spent the night in sleeping bags on bridges and in piazzas around town, and then packed St Peter's as soon as the barricades opened.
Benedict put John Paul on the fast-track for possible sainthood when he dispensed with the traditional five-year waiting period and allowed the beatification process to begin weeks after his April 2, 2005, death. Benedict was responding to chants of "Santo Subito" or "Sainthood Immediately" which erupted during John Paul's funeral.
On Saturday night, a "Santo Subito" banner was emblazoned on the side of the Circus Maximus field, where an all-night prayer vigil kicked off the beatification celebrations in earnest. The event featured testimony of the French nun whose inexplicable cure from Parkinson's disease was deemed miraculous by the Vatican, the miracle needed for John Paul to be beatified.
After the vigil officially ended, many pilgrims spent the night moving around the centre visiting eight churches that stayed open all night, a "white night" of prayer in honour of the late pope.
The beatification is taking place despite a steady drumbeat of criticism about the record-fast speed with which John Paul is being honoured, and continued outrage about the clerical abuse scandal. Many of the crimes and cover-ups of priests who raped children occurred on John Paul's 27-year watch.
"I hope he didn't know about the pedophiles," said Sister Maria Luisa Garcia, a Spanish nun attending the vigil. "If he did, it was an error. But no-one is perfect, only God."
At the very least, she said, the church had learned as a result of the scandal, "that a person's dignity, especially a child's, is more important than the Church's image".
Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, the French nun cured of Parkinson's, said that at the time she could not bear to watch John Paul's condition worsen because she knew his slow decline would be her fate.
"In him, I was reminded of what I was living through," she told the crowd. "But I always admired his humility, his strength, his courage."
Wearing her simple white habit and a black cardigan, she recounted to the crowd her now well-known tale.
She said that on June 2 2005, she told her superior she felt she could no longer continue her work helping new mothers because her Parkinson's symptoms had worsened and she had little strength left.
Her superior, she said, told her that "John Paul II hasn't had the last word" and that she should pray.
She said she woke up the following morning "feeling something had changed in me." She said she went to the chapel and prayed. "I wasn't the same. I knew I had been cured."
The Vatican's complicated saint-making procedures require that a miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession be confirmed before beatification, the first step to possible sainthood.