The coffin containing the body of Pope John Paul II is to be exhumed so that Roman Catholics can pray before it when he is beatified on May 1.
More than a million people are expected in Rome for the Mass in St Peter’s Square on the Feast of Divine Mercy, the focal point of three days of celebrations.
The wooden coffin, currently in the crypts below St Peter’s, is to be placed before the main altar after the beatification, the Vatican said yesterday.
It will remain closed and after a thanksgiving Mass on May 2, the remains of the late Pope, who died in 2005, will be moved to a side chapel in the basilica.
The Church recently approved the “miracle” needed for beatification after doctors could find no natural explanation for why a French nun was cured of Parkinson’s disease after she and fellow nuns prayed to him. A second miracle will be needed for him to take the final step to canonisation.
Exhumation of dead popes is not unprecedented. Veneration of relics dates back to the earliest days of the Church when Christians would pray at the graves of martyrs.
When the body of Pope John XXIII was exhumed 38 years after he died in 1963, it was found to be mostly intact because he had been embalmed.
He had reportedly asked for measures to be taken because he was concerned that the body of his predecessor Pius XII was preserved so badly in 1958 that the four men standing guard in the Vatican had to be changed every 15 minutes because they could not stand the stench.
Several Popes are now on view in St Peter’s, including Pius V.
