As John Paul II moves closer to sainthood three years after his death Polish bishops have launched an initiative to have his heart transferred to Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, Poland's national shrine. Since his death the body of the Polish-born John Paul has been buried in the crypt of St Peter's Basilica in Rome, where it is venerated by thousands daily.
The Vatican is said to be considering moving the tomb into the Basilica itself, where the late pontiff's remains may be displayed in a glass casket when he is beatified, the step before canonisation.
However Monsignor Tadeusz Pieronek, former secretary of the Polish Bishops Conference, said many Poles wanted John Paul's heart to be exhumed after the beatification ceremony and sent as a relic to Krakow, the city where John Paul was cardinal archbishop before being elected Pope in 1978. He said it was up to the Vatican, but such a step was "not excluded".
He was backed by Father Robert Necek, spokesman for the Krakow archdiocese, who said Poland would "certainly want a relic" of John Paul after his beatification. This could be a "fragment" of his body, such as the heart, or some other relic, he told KAI news agency.
Marco Politi, the Vatican expert of La Repubblica, said the decision would utlimately be taken by Pope Benedict XVI. But there was a tradition of separating the heart from the body, as in the case of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin, whose body is buried in Paris but whose heart is preserved at a church in Warsaw.
Similarly the body of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, Poland's leader between the First and Second World Wars, is buried in Krakow while his heart is buried in his mother's grave at Vilnius in Lithuania, where his family came from.
In Rome the hearts and viscera of Popes from Sixtus V, who died in 1590, to Leo XIII, who died in 1903, are preserved at the church of SS Vincenzo and Anastasio near the Trevi Fountain, below the Quirinal Palace, formerly the papal residence.
Pope Benedict XVI has put his predecessor on the fast track to sainthood by waiving the normal five year waiting period before the beatification process can begin after a candidate's death. Last week, at a mass on the third anniversary of John Paul's death, Benedict said he had had "supernatural" qualities.
He said that April 2 will "remain imprinted on the mind of the Church as the day when the Servant of God departed from this world." Speaking of John Paul II's legacy the pontiff said "He had an extraordinary faith in Christ...It was enough to observe him when he prayed: he was literally immersed in God, and it seemed that everything else in those moments was extraneous."
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