Beatification: Who's coming and why..

Nobody knows the exact number but Church organisers expect hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to flood into the city of Rome for the beatification ceremony of the beloved late pope John Paul II on Sunday May the 1st.

But where are these pilgrims mostly coming from? Are they young or old, what are some of their personal reasons for wanting to be there and are there still reasonably priced hotel rooms up for grabs in Rome during the beatification weekend? To find out the answers to these and other questions, Susy Hodges talked to Father Caesar Atuire, the manager at Opera Romani Pellegrinaggi, the Vatican institution in charge of organising the logistics for the beatification event.

Father Atuire says those pilgrims coming for the beatification are "quite a variegated group" .... there are many young people, but not teenagers ... so we're talking about "people (aged) 18 to 40 and we also have have people above 60" who are "devout and practising Catholics" and "we're also getting quite a lot of families, the whole family who is coming along."

Asked about some of the personal reasons that have prompted the pilgrims to come, Father Atuire speaks about a "young lady who wants to come ....because she remembers when she was a kid, during a papal audience, when she was still a baby, the pope (John Paul) passed by and lifted her up and kissed her and she still has the photographs and now this person is over 20 years old and she says she can't miss this moment, she has to come for this beatification."

Father Atuire is at pains to stress that there are still reasonably priced hotel rooms available during the beatification weekend and says "even the airlines are beginning to offer good rates." Concerning the nationality of the pilgrims, Father Atuire says it's likely that "Italians will be more than 50 percent" of the total number with approximately "25 to 30 percent coming from Poland" and around 10 percent coming "from the Anglo-Saxon world." Born in Ghana, Father Atuire adds that they've also received (bookings) from a couple of hundred people "who are coming from Africa: from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and from other countries as well."
Listen to the full interview: