Pope John Paul, fighting off exhaustion in a rapturous fifth visit to Mexico, made a 16th-century peasant the first Indian saint in the Americas on Wednesday, rejecting doubts over whether the man even existed.
Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of the capital to welcome the 82-year-old Pope, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and sometimes crippling arthritis.
On the last leg of a three-nation, 11-day tour, the Pope was extremely tired but seemed delighted by another ecstatic welcome as he canonized Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, whose repeated visions of a dark-skinned Virgin Mary helped convert millions of indigenous Mexicans to Catholicism.
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John Paul II listens to a speech by Mexican President Vicente Fox yesterday
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A dozen Indians in multicolored, plumed headdresses danced up the central aisle of the imposing Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City as the Pope declared Juan Diego a saint.
A huge official portrait of Juan Diego - controversial because many believe he looks more like a Spanish conqueror than an indigenous peasant - was carried into the basilica in a thick wooden frame and set down beside the stage.
The apparition seen in 1531 by Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, whose Indian name means "Talking Eagle," later become known as the Virgin of Guadalupe and is one of Mexico's central cultural and nationalistic symbols.
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Some academics and even some clergymen believe the church invented Juan Diego and the Virgin's legend to win the mass conversion of Mexicans and Indians across Latin America to the church of their Spanish conquerors.
But the Pope brushed the skeptics aside, saying at the canonization Mass that both Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe had a key role in spreading Christianity in the Americas.
"Juan Diego .... facilitated the fruitful meeting of two worlds and became the catalyst for the new Mexican identity, closely united to Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose mestizo face expresses her spiritual motherhood which embraces all Mexicans," said the Pope, who could barely keep his head up at times during the Mass but held a firm voice through the homily.
Repeating a theme he focused on in his visit to Guatemala earlier this week, the Pope said Mexico needed to offer its 10 million-strong Indian population greater "justice and solidarity" if it was to become a better country.
Ninety per cent of Mexico's 100 million people are Roman Catholics.