As hundreds of thousands fell to their knees across the nation to celebrate their countryman's beatification in Rome yesterday, there seemed little doubt that Poles already regarded him as Saint John Paul.
No more so than in his birthplace, the town of Wadowice in the foothills of the Beskidy mountains.
"The Holy Father was already a saint when he was alive," said Ewa Filipiak, the Mayor.
"Now there is no room for doubt."
To become a saint the Catholic Church must credit miracles to a candidate.
Pope Benedict XVI declared that a French nun had been cured of Parkinson's disease by John Paul II after his death.
John Paul II needs one more confirmed miracle to become a full saint
His home town yesterday was full of fresh-faced pilgrims staring up at the video transmission from Rome, as well as ageing contemporaries of the former Pope, who was born Karol Wojtyla.
One was Eugeniusz Mroz, 90, who was at school with Wojtyla. "It's a great joy to be alive to see this," he said.
Halina Kwiatkowska, a former actress who played in the same theatre group as Wojtyla - and who always denied rumours that she was a former girlfriend - remembered him as "a handsome young man, very sporty, a great skier who decided early on for the priesthood".
Father Pawel Ptasznik, 48, to whom the Pope would dictate his thoughts for future encyclicals and homilies, said that he expected John Paul II's canonisation soon: "This is not a procedural matter any more. A miracle will suffice. As soon as one has been established, it should take about a year."
A phial of the late Pope's blood has been placed in St Peter's, Rome, and in a church in Lagiewniki, close to Cracow, where 100,000 pilgrims prayed yesterday.
The hope is that the blood will contribute to a miracle. Relics from the Pope, usually clothing, are said by priests already to be helping the sick.
