RedTracker| A crowd of one million gathered at Vatican City today to honor the late John Paul II on his fast-track ride to sainthood.

“He was an inspiration to millions of people across the world, Catholic and non-Catholic,” Patrick Langrell, director of the Young Adult Outreach for the Archdiocese of New York, told The Daily Beast as he waited in line to get into the square. “He was a man of inspiration during a time when that was really difficult.”

It’s unknown whether the ‘rock star pope’ can salvage fractured Catholic congregations around the world. No one disputes Pope John Paul II’s rock star status. The facts are that out of 260 popes only 76 have ever been canonized. Only three popes have become saints in the last 700 years.

There were no demonstrations in Vatican City, but large numbers of Catholics believe that saints don’t have widespread sex abuse cases under wraps and on their papal watch.

The festivities kicked off Saturday night when nearly a quarter of a million pilgrims braved the rain to attend an atmospheric candle lit vigil in the ancient Circus Maximus at the base of the Palatine Hill in ancient Rome. The keynote speaker was Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, the French nun who theologians and the Vatican’s medical doctors say was miraculously cured of Parkinson’s Disease after she prayed to John Paul II. On Sunday morning, she carried his vial of blood in an ornate olive-branch style silver reliquary. (Daily Beast)

The NYTimes fills in the story with more background history of Pope John Paul II.