A million Spaniards turn out for the Pope

An aged and ailing Pope John Paul II proved he had lost none of his popular appeal yesterday when 1m people crammed into a Madrid square for what many Roman Catholics in Spain presumed would be their last glimpse of the best-travelled pontiff in history.

Hunched over, trembling and slurring from Parkinson's disease, the Pope coped with the fierce heat as he drew massive crowds on two public appearances during a weekend visit to Madrid that was the start of a fresh period of travels for the 82-year-old. He sat on a hydraulic chair on wheels that allows him to celebrate mass without getting to his feet. It was the first time he had needed the chair on a foreign trip.

On Saturday evening more than half a million young people had flooded a Madrid aerodrome to applaud a pope whose regular visits to Spain are said to have slowed a decline in faith in what was once one of world's most solidly Catholic countries.

Polls show 85% of Spaniards consider themselves Catholic but fewer than a fifth regularly attend Sunday Mass and most disagree with the Vatican line on issues such as divorce, contraception and homosexuality.

Yesterday, in the high point of his 36-hour visit, the Pope added to the record tally of saints he has created, conferring sainthood on five Spaniards.

They included Father Pedro Poveda, one of up to 7,000 priests and nuns shot by leftwing radicals during the Spanish civil war.

Father Poveda's canonisation followed calls from those investigating the mass executions carried out by supporters of General Francisco Franco - whose victory in the 1936-39 conflict ushered in a 40-year dictatorship - for the church to apologise for the clergymen who took part in the killings.

In the morning, a sea of faithful flooded Madrid's vast Plaza de Colon where the Pope presided over the mass. Thousands more, overflowing into nearby boulevards, watched on video screens.

"Do not break with your Christian roots!" he exhorted a chanting, cheering crowd. "Only thus will you be capable of bringing to the world and to Europe the cultural wealth of your history."

Observers said the Pope had been expected, in private, to ask the conservative prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, to back moves to have Europe's Christian roots explicitly recognised in a future EU constitution.

This visit provoked great expectation among Spain's normally anti-clerical left, which had wanted the Pope to publicly criticise Mr Aznar for his government's support for the Iraq war.

His repeated use of the word "peace" was interpreted by many observers as veiled criticism but there was no public attack on the Catholic prime minister.