The Vatican has announced that Pope John Paul II is to be beatified in May.
By declaring him 'Blessed', the Catholic Church will promote him to just one step short of sainthood.
The decision, believed to be one of the most rapid of its kind, follows Pope Benedict XVI's approval of a decree attributing a miracle to him.
Church officials concluded that John Paul had interceded with God to cure Sister Marie Simon-Pierre Normand, a 49-year-old French nun diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, from which the pope himself had suffered.
She said her illness inexplicably disappeared two months after his death when she and her fellow nuns prayed to him.
But news of John Paul II's beatification has alarmed clerical abuse victims who called on the Church to 'move cautiously' in honouring the ex-pontiff, saying he did not do enough to combat abuse by priests during his pontificate.
Barbara Dorris of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) condemned the 'hasty drive to confer sainthood on the pontiff under whose reign most of the widely-documented clergy sex crimes and cover ups took place.'
