Europe marks the late pope's birthday

EU: With church services, commemorative stamps and even the renaming of an Italian peak, Pope John Paul II was remembered across Europe yesterday, on what would have been his 85th birthday.

In Wadowice, the town in southern Poland where Karol Wojtyla was born, thousands gathered for a midday Mass to celebrate the life of a pontiff who served as the nation's spiritual guide as it struggled free of Soviet-backed communism.

The birthday celebrations began with a huge concert in Wadowice's main square on Tuesday night, with performances by an orchestra and choir and scenes from John Paul's life relayed on a huge screen to a crowd of about 10,000 people, who only stopped singing hymns for a moment's silence at 9.37pm, the time the Pope died on April 2nd.

Yesterday's Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, a leading figure in the Polish church, who will play a key role in the beatification of John Paul II.

Pope Benedict XVI's announcement last Friday that he has put his predecessor on a fast track to sainthood, waiving the usual five-year waiting period for beatification procedures, was warmly welcomed across Poland.

"He will be beatified, he will be a saint," Cardinal Macharski said during Mass. He will "remain what he has been for us - a guide, a companion, a brother, a friend that leads us, that consoles us and lifts us up."

Many people in Wadowice, which attracted worshippers from across Poland, urged the Vatican to hold the beatification ceremony in the town, or at least in nearby Krakow, where Wojtyla was a much-loved archbishop before being summoned to Rome.

At the Vatican yesterday, Pope Benedict told a rain-drenched crowd that John Paul was still watching over the Catholic Church that he led for 27 years.

"From on high he sees us and is with us," Benedict proclaimed, to loud applause from the crowd.

The Vatican also announced that a mountain peak in the imposing Gran Sasso range, previously known as "The Gendarme", had been renamed after John Paul.

"Mountains always exercised a strong and suggestive fascination over the mind of John Paul," said Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, who called the former pope "the mountain theologian".