Millions greet Pope in Mexico City

One of every 10 Catholics worldwide is Mexican, and nearly seven million of the most fervent believers lined the streets of Mexico City yesterday to catch a glimpse of Pope John Paul II slumped in his bulletproof Popemobile, waving a trembling hand.

He rode from the cathedral at the capital's heart north to the Basilica of Guadalupe, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gathered for an extraordinary Mass. Bare-legged Aztec dancers, with feathered head-dresses and armadillo-shell rattles, blew conches as a 16th-century indigenous shepherd became Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin.

The Pope's fifth visit to Mexico City brought it to a standstill. Offices and banks were shut, thoroughfares were cut off by chains of 200,000 volunteers clasping hands, and the doors of most churches were padlocked. A notice on San Jacinto church read: "Due to the papal visit, there is no Mass today. Given the multitude of visitors, we will follow the celebrations on television."

Huge screens were erected in barrios across the city, enabling crowds to watch the Mass as if it were a rock concert. Vendors hawked yellow banners and souvenir rosaries.

In a country still haunted by the brutalities of the Inquisition and resentful of the immense wealth once controlled by the Church, such an ecstatic reception for the Pope is phenomenal. President Vicente Fox, the first Mexican leader in 150 years to be so openly Catholic in public, knelt and kissed the Pope's ring at a welcoming ceremony in an airport hangar on Tuesday night.

President Fox married his press spokeswoman, Marta Sahagun, last year in a civil ceremony. Although the Vatican does not sanction this union because each is divorced, the first couple have attended all the papal ceremonies hand in hand, and were to meet the Pontiff privately yesterday.

Mexico's obvious devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe, named by the Pope in 1999 as patron saint of all the Americas , and to Juan Diego, her Indian intermediary, is almost an anomaly, because so few modern Mexicans follow strict Roman Catholic doctrine. They readily divorce, insist on separation of church and state, and the government promotes condoms and other forms of contraception .

In naming the first Indian saint, the Church is reaching out to native populations proselytised by Protestant evangelists for 25 years. The Pope seeks greater respect for all indigenous, or mixed-blood, people on the continent.

For the Vatican, Mexico is the crucial link, tying Catholic Latin America to the United States, where Hispanic Catholics have become the main bastion of the Church.

Meanwile, the artisan who restored the cloak on which the Indian Virgin of Guadalupe's image is believed to have miraculously appeared broke 50 years of silence to confess it was a crude fake. Jose Antonio Flores, now 78, who restored the image twice, said it was painted on with modern materials.