LORETO: Bookmakers in Ireland have began offering odds on the election chances of 120 plus cardinals eligible to take part in the next conclave.

In Rome, Vatican experts are quietly updating their lists of papal candidates.

They should not write off this pope just yet. Speculation that the final days of Pope John Paul II may be nearing have been fuelled by a recent trip to the French shrine of Lourdes, in which the 84-year-old pontiff appeared particularly frail.

Speaking at the end of his mid-August visit to the shrine where many sick and handicapped Catholics pray for miracle healings, the pope said: "I end my pilgrimage here." For Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the pope was in fact warning the faithful that his own death may be looming.

"When (he) says, 'I end my pilgrimage here,' that can be taken two ways ... his farewell to Lourdes - and maybe to his life," Cardinal Danneels was quoted as saying. On Sunday, however, hundreds of millions of Catholics around the world were able to draw comfort from watching John Paul preside over a beatification ceremony near the central Italian town of Loreto.

Despite no longer being able to walk because of Parkinson's disease, and in spite of being repeatedly asked to slow down by his personal physicians, the pope insisted on making the 500 kilometres long round trip from his summer residence near Rome to Loreto.

True, the trip by helicopter was only one hour long, much less than his journey to Lourdes. And once in Vallata di Montorso, a field below the hill-top Marian shrine, both his movement and speech were kept to a minimum.

Yet he appeared visibly invigorated by the 200,000 plus crowd during the two hour-long ceremony, despite the high summer temperatures that have been baking the nearby sandy beaches of the Adriatic Sea. -dpa