Benedict praises John Paul II amid sainthood row

Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to the legacy of his predecessor John Paul II, five years after his death, amid questions over the late pontiff's record in combating paedophile priests and whether a miracle needed for his sainthood really happened.

During an evening Mass in St Peter's Basilica yesterday to honour the late Pope, Benedict told pilgrims from John Paul's Polish homeland that his predecessor had "without interruption taught us to be faithful witnesses to faith, hope and love".

Krakow cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who for decades was John Paul's personal secretary, was among the prelates at the commemoration.

Also attending was US cardinal Bernard Law, who after resigning as Boston archbishop in the sex abuse scandal which rocked his diocese, was put in charge of a prestigious Rome basilica by the late Pope.

John Paul, 84, died on April 2, 2005 after battling Parkinson's disease. The commemoration was early because April 2 this year falls on Good Friday, when Benedict will preside over Lenten services at the Vatican and at the Colosseum in Rome.

Immediately after John Paul's death, the faithful began clamouring for his sainthood and in December Benedict signed a decree proclaiming him "venerable" for his holy virtues.

At first, the inexplicable healing of a young French nun from Parkinson's disease had initially seemed like the miracle required for remarkably swift approval for beatification, the last formal step before canonisation.

The nun, who had prayed to John Paul for years, woke up one morning two months after his death, seemingly inexplicably cured of the progressively degenerative neurological disorder.

But a Polish newspaper recently reported that doubts had been cast about whether the nun had Parkinson's at all. Without citing sources, Rzeczpospolita, one of Poland's most respected dailies, said the Vatican had summoned new experts to scrutinise the case.

The Vatican's former head of its saint-making office, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, indicated two medical consultants might have had doubts.

According to America's National Parkinson Foundation, an estimated 20% of patients thought to have the disease were found at autopsies not to have had it.

"Most movement disorders experts would agree that miracle cures of Parkinson or other movement disorders usually have a psychogenic component to the illness," the foundation's Dr Michael Okun said.

But a potentially more serious shadow has been cast on the beatification process.

Intense scrutiny is being thrown on how the Vatican handled sex abuse cases from dioceses around the world, particularly an explosion of complaints from Americans during John Paul's 26-year papacy.

The harsher look at the Vatican's policy on sex abuse has come as Benedict's own record on dealing with the problem is being probed in his native Germany, when he was Munich archbishop, as well as his long tenure at the Vatican as John Paul's watchdog for purity in the Catholic church.

John Paul's transfer of Cardinal Law to St Mary Major's, one of Rome's most celebrated basilicas, was seen by many abuse victims as rewarding, not punishing, the cleric for a policy by which many paedophile priests were shuttled from parish to parish, instead of removed from contact with children.

John Paul held up as a model, the rigorously conservative founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was later revealed to have fathered a child and had molested seminarians.

The Vatican began investigating allegations against the Rev Marcial Maciel of Mexico in the 1950s, but it was not until 2006, a year into Benedict's pontificate, that the Vatican instructed him to lead a "reserved life of prayer and penance" in response to the abuse allegations - effectively removing him from power.