São Paulo

Up to a million faithful are expected to throng a São Paulo park as Pope Benedict XVI celebrates a mass to canonise Brazil’s first saint, a Franciscan monk still credited with miracle cures nearly 200 years after his death. The canonisation Mass follows close on the heels of a rally late on Thursday.

Searchers dug through tonnes of rubble on Saturday in search of as many as eight people believed buried by a construction accident at a commuter rail tunnel in South America’s biggest city, São Paulo. Officials said a passenger bus was buried at the bottom of a 40m-deep pit dug for an underground railway station.

Police shot dead at least 22 people on Wednesday in an iron-fisted crackdown against a powerful criminal gang blamed for lethal attacks in São Paulo as Brazil’s president criticised local authorities for refusing federal assistance. The clashes claimed the lives of 40 police and four members of the public, and 18 prisoners have died in prison riots blamed on the PCC gang.

Police shot dead at least 18 assailants early on Wednesday, media reported, in the latest clashes in a five-day explosion of gang violence in São Paulo that has claimed about 150 lives. The city has been gripped by fear since a powerful gang launched attacks on police stations, banks and buses, as well as prison uprisings.