Pope Benedict XVI paid homage to his predecessor in an evening vigil at the landmark St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Sunday.
Benedict recited a prayer at 9:37 p.m. local time, the exact time of John Paul's death a year earlier on April 2, 2005.
Selections from the late pontiff's writings were also read.
The service was also broadcast live via videolink in Krakow, Poland, where John Paul was once archbishop.
People in the Polish city said they were saddened by the remembrance of the pontiff's death, but hopeful about his elevation to sainthood in the church.
"We were depressed then, but today we rejoice in his sainthood even though it has not been officially announced," Krystyna Samborska, a 32-year-old nurse, told the Associated Press in Krakow.
John Paul was also remembered in prayers during masses at Catholic churches across Canada.
In Mexico City, tens of thousands packed the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
In the former pope's hometown of Wadowice in southern Poland, an open-air mass drew an estimated 8,000 people.
In his weekly address to thousands of people at St. Peter's Square earlier in the day, Benedict praised John Paul's work and legacy.
"John Paul II died as he always lived, moved by an indomitable courage of faith, abandoning himself to God."
Benedict recalled how John Paul fulfilled his role even as he suffered from a range of physical ailments in the last years of his life.
"When he could no longer travel, then no longer walk and, in the end, no longer speak, his gesture ... was reduced to the essential: a gift of himself to the last instant," he said.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/200...sary060402.html
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