So you created the user at a later stage, seems OK.
Had done this right from the start - following the wiki...
Yes but not by only adding the (sym)link.
That is because most likely the $TOMCAT_USER and $TOMCAT_HOME are set in the script and not known on the CLI. Why don't you just try the commands in the wiki, it states even in bold:Which means reboot and the service should be started... did you already try that?
Yes I did
Perhaps this will work as well, although I can not test it:
service tomcat start
Gives me this:
[root@cmenl ~]# service tomcat start
Starting Jakarta Tomcat 6.
Using CATALINA_BASE: /opt/tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME: /opt/tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /opt/tomcat/temp
Using JRE_HOME: /usr/java/jdk