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On the fast track to sainthood

Vatican City Oct. 18 . Both the poor and the powerful will have VIP seats in St. Peter's Square on Sunday when Pope John Paul II leads a long ceremony to beatify Mother Teresa, to honour the nun he so greatly admired.

The Pope was so impressed by her tireless devotion to the dying and destitute that he put her on the fast track toward sainthood after her death in Kolkata in 1997.

The pontiff, now 83, broke with the Church practice of waiting five years after a candidate's death before starting the often decades-long process of beatification, the last step on the path to sainthood.

Following several days of long public ceremonies to mark the 25th anniversary of John Paul's pontificate, Sunday's two-hour ceremony underscores the Pope's determination to give the faithful fresh, and in this case, modern role models.

Police in Rome estimated as many as 300,000 people, one of the biggest crowds ever in St. Peter's, could turn out.

City authorities have rerouted buses and erected barriers on streets leading to the Vatican in hopes of preventing traffic jams. Portable toilets and tens of thousands of bottles of water were being supplied for the pilgrims, including some 4,000 from the United States.

The front-row seats in the square were reserved for politicians, diplomats and about 2,000 thousand poor people who are cared for by the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns Mother Teresa established and which now operates across the globe.

Kolkata jubilant

In Kolkata, people in orphanages, leprosy homes and elsewhere were checking their televisions to make sure they could watch the ceremony.

"This is a momentous occasion for us," Sister Christie of the Missionaries of Charity told The Associated Press today.

Mother House had a fresh coat of paint, but there was no sign of ostentation in the four-storied grey building in a narrow Kolkata lane where Mother Teresa lived most of her life.

Television sets were placed in outlying homes the charity runs for the sick, orphaned and destitute because "we would like all to share the moment," said Raju, who works at one of the centres. "They love Mother Teresa so much and they also don't want to miss the ceremony.''

Nuns in the city said they would hold a special morning mass in the city, which was Mother Teresa's home since 1929, to be followed by a feast at the missionary's charitable homes.

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