VATICAN CITY — During his 2005 funeral, crowds at the Vatican shouted for Pope John Paul II to be made a saint immediately. “Santo subito!” they chanted for one of the most important and beloved pontiffs in history.

His successor heard their call. On Friday, in the fastest process on record, Pope Benedict XVI set May 1 as the date for John Paul’s beatification — a key step toward Catholicism’s highest honor and a major morale boost for a church reeling from the clerical sex abuse scandal.

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Postcards of the late Pope John Paul II are displayed outside a souvenir kiosk near St. Peter's Square in Rome on Friday. Pope Benedict XVI has approved a miracle attributed to John Paul II's intercession and set May 1 as the date for the beloved pontiff to be beatified. The Associated Press

Benedict set the date after declaring that a French nun’s recovery from Parkinson’s disease was the miracle needed for John Paul to be beatified. A second miracle is needed to be canonized a saint.

Benedict himself will preside at the May 1 ceremony, which is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Rome for a precedent-setting Mass: Never before has a pope beatified his immediate predecessor.

Although the numbers may not reach the 3 million who flocked here for John Paul’s funeral, religious tour operators in his native Poland were already preparing to bus and fly in the faithful to celebrate a man many considered a saint while he was alive.

“We have waited a long time and this is a great day for us,” said Mayor Ewa Filipiak in John Paul’s hometown of Wadowice, where the faithful lit candles Friday and prayed at a chapel in the town church dedicated to John Paul.

The Rev. Pawel Danek, who runs a museum in John Paul’s family home, said Benedict had listened to the prayers.

“The Holy Father has confirmed what we all felt somehow,” he said. “For us, John Paul II’s holiness is obvious.”

Benedict put John Paul on the fast track to possible sainthood just weeks after he died, waiving the typical five-year waiting period before the process could begin.

But he insisted that the investigation into John Paul’s life be thorough to avoid any doubts about his virtues.

The beatification will nevertheless be the fastest on record, coming a little more than six years after his death and beating out Mother Teresa’s then-record beatification in 2003 by a few days.

It is not without controversy, however. While John Paul himself was never accused of improprieties, he has long been accused of responding slowly when the sex abuse scandal erupted in the United States in 2002. Many of the thousands of cases that emerged last year involved crimes and cover-ups during his 26-year papacy.

Critics have faulted John Paul’s overriding concern with preserving the rights of accused priests, often at the expense of victims — a concern formed in part by his experiences in communist-controlled Poland, where priests were often accused of trumped-up charges.

The most damaging case linked to John Paul concerned the Rev. Marciel Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative order beloved by the late pope because of its orthodoxy, fundraising prowess and ability to attract priestly vocations.

Allegations that Maciel had raped young seminarians were brought by the victims to the Vatican in the 1990s, but under apparent orders from John Paul’s No. 2, a canonical trial was shelved.

Only after Benedict became pope was Maciel sanctioned in 2006; Maciel died two years later.

Despite the Maciel case, Vatican officials have said there was nothing in John Paul’s record that put his beatification into question. Vatican watchers noted Friday that beatification isn’t a “score card” on how John Paul administered the church but rather a recognition that he led a saintly life.

Carl Anderson, head of the Knights of Columbus, one of the world’s largest Catholic fraternal service organizations, said John Paul’s life was a model of “love, respect and forgiveness for all.”

“We saw this in the way he reached out to the poor, the neglected, those of other faiths, even the man who shot him,” Anderson said. “He did all of this despite being so personally affected by events of the bloodiest century in history.”

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