Pope John Paul has beatified a nineteenth-century Colombian priest, Father Marianito -- one of five people he's put on the first step towards recognition as a saint.

Several thousand people, many of them Colombians, gathered in St Peter's Square in Rome to witness the ceremony.

Father Marianito, whose real name was Mariano de Jesus Euse Hoyos, was born in Antioquia province in 1845.

He ministered to the poorest of the poor during a time of persecution of Catholics by Freemasons and paramilitaries.

He died at the age of 81 in 1926, but is credited with the miraculous cure of a cancer-stricken Colombian priest in 1982. He would be the first saint to have spent his entire life in Colombia.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service