GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - With the spotlight again on his health, Pope John Paul II was set to preside on Tuesday over a ceremony to create Central America's first saint as one of the longest tours of his 23-year papacy entered its final stretch.
Looking tired, the 82-year-old pontiff arrived in Guatemala on Monday to a rapturous welcome and urged the country to definitively bury its bloody past.
Instead of using the stairs of the plane that took him to Guatemala from Toronto, the pope chose a waiting cargo lift that had been fitted with a glass box bedecked with flowers.
Suffering from Parkinson's disease and sometimes crippling arthritis, the pope started the second leg of his 11-day trip on a more subdued note than in Canada, where he presided at World Youth Day and delighted followers with a burst of stamina.
Still, he was greeted here with cheers and some tears from tens of thousands of exuberant Catholic faithful who thronged his popemobile as it rode over a miles-long carpet of colored sawdust to reach his residence.
In a lightning, 25-hour trip to the capital the pope will make a saint of Pedro de San Jose Betancur, a 17th century Spanish missionary who spent his life helping the poor. He is scheduled to leave Guatemala on Tuesday to spend two days in Mexico before returning to Rome.
Despite its religious mission, the trip's political overtones quickly became a theme of the day in Guatemala, a country ravaged by bloody civil war. The pope wasted no time in stressing that Guatemalans must consolidate new-found peace.
"I fervently hope that the noble Guatemalan people, who thirst for God and for spiritual values, who are anxious for peace, solidarity and justice, may live and enjoy the dignity which is theirs," he said upon arriving on Monday.
POVERTY REPLACES WAR
The nation of 12 million is still struggling with reconciliation and consolidation of democracy after a 36-year Cold-War era civil war that ended in 1996 and left as many as 200,000 people dead, most of them poor Maya Indians.
"We are today planting the seeds (of hope) and at the same time walking over the ashes of the past," President Alfonso Portillo told the pope.
At a capital city stadium, Catholic youth celebrated the pope's arrival with an all-night concert of Christian salsa, rock and merengue.
A party atmosphere reigned as followers spent the night carpeting the streets with elaborate sawdust designs for his motorcade to pass over on Tuesday.
When Pope John Paul first visited Central America in 1983, the region was engulfed in Cold War-era civil wars. Retired Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, then Guatemala's president, defied a papal plea and sparked international outrage when he executed six people three days before the pope arrived.
This time Portillo, a Catholic, sent an initiative to Congress to abolish the death penalty and commute the death sentences of 36 convicted rapists, murderers and kidnappers, at the Vatican's request.
While Central America's global strategic importance virtually disappeared with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, rampant poverty continues and the pope is expected to address the needs of Latin American poor here and in Mexico.
Rest has been the watchword of the pope's 97th foreign trip, which began last Tuesday in Canada. Aides have included long periods of rest between events.
"He looked healthy and eager to visit Guatemala, a country he loves so much," said Guatemala City Mayor Fritz Garcia-Gallont.