Pope's Health Sparks Concern
Pope John Paul II's hands and head shook and his face grimaced in pain. His private secretary, clearly alarmed, raced over to steady and comfort him.
That image of John Paul, flashed around the world by television from a visit to an Orthodox cathedral in Georgia this week, raised questions of how long this most-traveled pontiff can keep up the pace.
Ahead of him in the coming months are expected visits to Iraq and the Holy Land, as well as a year-long calendar of events when the Vatican marks the start of Christianity's third millennium.
He is expected to make nearly daily appearances as an anticipated 25 million pilgrims pour into Rome in the new year. The Vatican has given no hint it intends to change the plans.
The 79-year-old pontiff has become a picture of suffering. He shuffles his feet and depends more and more on a cane. His hands tremble and his speech is slurred, symptoms of Parkinson's, a progressive neurological disorder. The Vatican no longer denies the pope suffers from it, but has never given a full diagnosis, suggesting that such details are a breach of privacy.
In an unusually personal letter to the elderly last month, John Paul made a public assessment of his condition.
Â"Despite the limitations brought on by age, I continue to enjoy life,Â" John Paul wrote. Â"It is wonderful to be able to give oneself to the very end for the sake of the Kingdom of the Lord.Â"
Making the 89th foreign tour of his 22-year papacy, John Paul flew from balmy New Delhi to the autumn chill of Georgia, the former Soviet republic in the Caucasus Mountains. In New Delhi, he stumbled while wearing sandals in the Mahatma Gandhi monument and was steadied by an aide.
Church organizers built a special elevator so John Paul would not have to climb 17 stairs to the altar at a Mass in New Delhi, but papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls described as Â"rubbishÂ" a report that a chair was designed to restrict the trembling of his arms.
While sitting wrapped in his red cape at Tbilisi airport during the arrival ceremony in Georgia, four cardinals formed a buffer to shield him from the wind.
The Vatican said he suffered a Â"big chillÂ" but that the pope planned to go ahead with his activities.
He did, bouncing back to celebrate a Mass in a packed cathedral, then holding talks with the country's president and later speaking to schoolchildren in a clear voice.
It was the second time this year that health problems arose while on a foreign trip. In his Polish homeland in June, John Paul fell and needed two stitches to close the wound in his head. He later came down with the flu, disappointing 1 million people waiting for him at a Mass in Krakow.
Â"Your Holiness, watch out for your health,Â" the Italian newspaper Il Giorno said Tuesday, echoing comments of many Italians.
In an interview broadcast Wednesday by Vatican Radio, the station's direcor, the Rev. Pasquale Borgomeo, said he was most struck during the latest trip by the sight of the cardinals shielding the shivering pope at the Tbilisi airport.
He said it symbolized the relationship of the pope and Â"his closest aides, who physically protect him.Â"
Â"It is a representative image, rather beautiful, of what is solidarity in the church,Â" he said.
By Victor L. Simpson
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