The once controversial Capuchin monk, Padre Pio, was yesterday declared a saint by Pope John Paul II in an impressive 2½ hour canonisation ceremony attended by an estimated 300,000 pilgrims.
On a blisteringly hot day, cheers,applause and bells rang out, not just in the Vatican but in many other towns in Italy, including Padre Pio's birthplace of Pietrelcina in Campania and also in San Giovanni Rotondo in Puglia, home of the Capuchin monastery where Padre Pio lived for most of his life.
Despite looking his now customary frail self, the 82-year-old Pope presided over the entire service. He took time at the end to issue a multi-lingual Angelus greeting to the pilgrims of many different nationalities (Ireland included), before an extended drive around in his Popemobile.
Earlier, in his trembling voice, the Pope had read out the Latin formula which declares sainthood, saying:
"We include the blessed Padre Pio of Pietrelcina in the annals of saints and we declare that throughout the entire church he be honoured with devotion among the saints."
Padre Pio, who died in 1968 at the age of 81, is known to millions of Catholics worldwide for his holiness and for the stigmata (Greek for marks) or bodily signs of Christ's passion which he bore for the last 40 years of his life.
Even though he was treated with distrust by a series of high-ranking Vatican officials, many of whom doubted the authenticity of his stigmata, he became increasingly ever more venerated by ordinary Catholic faithful.
Upwards of eight million pilgrims now travel every year to his shrine in San Giovanni Rotondo.
One person who believed in the holiness of Padre Pio, however, was Pope John Paul who yesterday recalled that he had had the "privilege" of having had his confession heard by Padre Pio when he visited San Giovanni Rotondo as a young newly ordained priest in 1947.
In yesterday's homily, during a ceremony which saw him canonise the 457th saint of his pontificate, the Pope paid tribute to the many trials endured by the "humble Capuchin from Pietrelcina" while also highlighting the particular fascination of Padre Pio.
"Padre Pio was a generous dispenser of divine charity, receiving and making himself available to everyone through his spiritual direction and above all through his administration of the Sacrament of Penitence.
" It is the ministry of Confession, one of the distinctive traits of Padre Pio's mission, that attracts numerous crowds of the faithful to the Convent of San Giovanni Rotondo," the Pope said.
Three years ago, when Padre Pio was beatified, he was accredited with having effected a miraculous cure with the medically inexplicable healing of an Italian woman suffering from a terminal lung disease.
For yesterday's canonisation, his intercession was again credited with another miracle, this one relating to an 11-year-old boy, Matteo Colella.
In February 2000, Matteo seemed certain to die, having been struck with a severe form of meningitis. The boy recovered after his mother had gone to pray to Padre Pio on the friar's tomb in San Giovanni Rotondo.
On recovering his health, Matteo told his parents that he had dreamt he had met "an old monk with a white beard" who took him by the hand and told him "not to worry".
Yesterday, Matteo was among those who attended yesterday's canonisation service, receiving communion from the Cardinal of Palermo, Salvatore Di Giorgi.
Although the Pope survived yesterday's torrid heat remarkably well, not everyone else did.
One person suffered a heart attack, 40 were brought to hospital and more than 400 required emergency medical attention on a day when police also arrested 11 would-be thieves or pickpockets.