Juan Diego To Join Ranks Of Saints

His voice trembling with exhaustion and infirmity, Pope John Paul II told Mexicans it was "with deep joy" that he would canonize the Roman Catholic church's first American Indian saint on Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands of faithful sang, cheered and sobbed along Mexico City streets as John Paul waved to them from his popemobile Tuesday night. "Brother John Paul, now you are Mexican," jubilant crowds chanted.

"I got chills up to my head," said Irene Guzman, a 25-year-old speech therapist from San Gabriel, California, who traveled to Mexico City to see the pope and visit relatives.

Mexicans have a special affection for John Paul, who chose their country for the first foreign trip of his papacy and has returned on what many expect will be one of his last.

Mexico was the final leg of an 11-day, three-country trip that took the pope to Toronto for a celebration of Catholic youths from across the world and to Guatemala City, where on Tuesday he canonized a 17th-century missionary who dedicated his life to helping prisoners, abandoned children and the sick.

The travels appeared to be taking their toll on the 82-year-old pontiff, who suffers from symptoms of Parkinson's disease and hip and knee problems. In Guatemala, he climbed a staircase to board his airplane, but on arrival in Mexico he used a hydraulic lift to get out, and was wheeled on a platform to a stage.

As a band struck up the national anthems of Mexico and the Vatican, the pope motioned to an aide to help him to his feet. But he began to slide back into his seat, and President Vicente Fox reached over to steady him.

His words slurred, the pope said he was ecstatic to return to Mexico, where in 1979 he strummed a guitar with mariachis and donned a sombrero at a bullfighting ring.

"My joy is immense at being able to come to this hospitable land for the fifth time," he said.

On Wednesday, the pope will canonize Juan Diego, an Indian whose visions of the Virgin Mary in 1531 were key in converting millions of native Mexicans to Catholicism. Believers say the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego and left an olive-skinned image of herself on his cloak.

Debate has intensified in recent months over the canonization - the ceremony officially declaring someone to have been a saint - of Juan Diego, who some believe never existed. And while Juan Diego will not be the first saint involved in such a controversy, several Mexican priests did ask the Vatican to delay the canonization because of the doubts - a request that was not granted.

A vast majority of Mexicans tie their national identity to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and to the man to whom they believe that she appeared.

"This is the first pope to recognize an Indian, a humble Indian," said Maria Socorro Dominguez, a 48-year-old lawyer among the faithful lining the streets.

While in Mexico, Pope John Paul II will also beatify two Indians who were lynched in 1700 after denouncing their Indian community to Catholic authorities for worshiping pagan idols. Beatification is a step in the process towards becoming a saint.

More than 30,000 police were deployed around the city to keep the peace, and some officers said they were told they wouldn't sleep for three days - the duration of the pope's stay.

"It's worth it, isn't it?" said officer Ruben Alejandro Rodriguez, 29, holding his city-supplied meal of two small ham-and-cheese sandwiches and an apple.

On Tuesday morning in Guatemala City, John Paul canonized Pedro de San Jose Betancur, a former church handyman and prison pastor who founded an international order that serves the poor. He urged Guatemalans to follow Betancur's example and said the new saint "represents an urgent appeal to practice mercy in modern society."

The pope said Indians, many targeted by Guatemalan troops during a 1960-1996 civil war that killed 200,000 people, deserve "justice, integral development and peace."

"The pope does not forget you and, admiring the values of your cultures, encourages you to overcome with hope the sometimes difficult situations you experience," he said to the many Mayan Indians at the ceremony.

At the pope's arrival in Mexico, Fox praised him for fighting poverty and human rights violations.

"The world in which we live today wouldn't be the same without the spiritual and moral leadership ... of John Paul II," Fox said.

Since the pontiff's last visit in 1999, the 71-year rule of the anti-clerical Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has been replaced by Fox's pro-Catholic National Action Party.

During the PRI's long, and sometimes authoritarian rule, Church and state were kept strictly separated. Mexico only established diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1992.

Analysts say relations between the two are now at an all-time high, with Fox the first openly practicing Catholic president of Mexico.

Some 10 million adoring followers are expected to throng Mexico City's streets to catch a glimpse of John Paul, who remains extremely popular in Mexico, home to the second largest number of Catholics in the world after Brazil.