LI Poles cheer Pope John Paul II news

Of all the proud people in Riverhead's Polishtown neighborhood, Christine M. Blasko might have been the proudest Friday.

"I saw him twice - at Yankee Stadium and at Aqueduct" appearances, Blasko said of the late Pope John Paul II. "He's a beautiful man. He reminds me of my papa." In her living room, the 83-year-old reached for a coffee table drawer filled with magazines, each with John Paul II on the cover.

On Friday, the Vatican announced that the pope's beatification - the third of four key steps leading to sainthood - would take place on May 1, the Sunday after Easter. As Blasko looked out from her living room, over piles of snow in the street toward St. Isidore's Roman Catholic Church, she said that spring date was just fine.

"We'll probably have Masses galore, people will come from all around. Everybody will be coming out . . . I can't get over it."

Blasko's grandfather was one of the workmen who built St. Isidore's, at the center of Riverhead's Polish community for more than 100 years.

Its pastor, the Rev. Robert Kuznik, 44, was raised in Poland, near where John Paul II grew up as Karol Jozef Wojtyla, and just returned from a trip there.

"We kind of knew this was in the works. We knew it might happen," he said of the move toward sainthood.

Pastor Kuznik recalled the 2005 funeral for John Paul, when mourners in St. Peter's Square held signs demanding - in Latin - "Sainthood Right Now."

"This is someone we knew," he said of the man often called The Polish Pope. "He was instrumental in bringing down Communism, in helping young people . . . he had an incredible love and concern for the family."

Down Riverhead's Pulaski Street, at the Euro Deli, Luiza Drozdowska, 18, said she grew up in Poland, also near where John Paul II was born. "My parents talk about him all the time," she said. "He was a good person . . . when he talked, he talked like you and me, like a friend. For young people, he really helped us."