Pope 'responding well to treatment'
Pope John Paul II was responding well to treatment after being taken to a Rome hospital with breathing problems brought on by the flu, the Vatican said.
Around the world, Roman Catholics – from Franciscan friars in Italy to American teenagers in Florida – prayed for his health.
The Holy See insisted there was no cause for alarm, but a top church health official said doctors were on guard for complications that could weaken the already-frail pontiff, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease. The Vatican said the 84-year-old Pope would spend the next few days at the Gemelli Polyclinic hospital after being admitted late on Tuesday.
“He’s bouncing back,” said Italian Health Minister Girolamo Sirchia after a visit to Gemelli. “We’re optimistic. The doctors are optimistic.”
The Pope is “recovering well,” said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who, as secretary of state, is the Vatican’s No. 2.
He told private TV Canale 5 the pope’s breathing problems could have been handled at the Vatican, where the pope had been laid up since Sunday evening with the flu. “But the Holy Father, as everybody, entrusts himself to the doctors” and the decision was made to take him to hospital, he said.
The Vatican said the Pope had suffered spasms of the larynx, making it difficult for him to breathe, and had an inflamed windpipe.
A medical bulletin on the Pope’s condition was expected about noon today, after his second night in the hospital. The clinic was calm overnight, though police stayed on alert. Before dawn, lights switched on in the clinic’s 10th floor, where the pontiff was staying in a special papal suite.
Apprehension over the fate of the leader of the world’s 1 billion Catholics and one of the globe’s best-known figures triggered an outpouring of well-wishes.
Poles prayed for him in the church where he was baptised, while Mexicans gathered in churches to light candles. Franciscan friars in the crypt of St. Francis Basilica in Assisi, Italy, asked God to help the Pope in his suffering, while Catholic high school students in Pensacola, Florida, attended Mass in their gymnasium.
“If anything happens to him, God forbid, there would be a great loss to the world,” said Bishop John Ricard, who heads the Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese and celebrated the Mass. “So we are going to spend a great deal more time in prayer.”
While anyone with the flu can develop respiratory complications, the elderly are especially vulnerable. Doctors also must guard against life-threatening complications, like pneumonia.
Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, head of the Vatican’s health care office, said the Pope’s stooped posture kept his lungs and diaphragm in a crushed position, a chronic obstacle to proper breathing.
Keeping the Pope in hospital would afford “many means to stay ready for any complications”, he said.
John Paul, battling Parkinson’s disease as well as hip and knee ailments, has been in weak health for many years. But a leading Italian cardiologist, Attilio Maseri, who has previously treated the pontiff, said the pontiff had two enviable factors on his side.
“He has exceptional cardiovascular function, guided by exceptional willpower,” said Maseri, now based in Milan’s San Raffaele hospital.
“If he overcomes the respiratory problems he’s suffering, he’ll certainly be able to go back doing what he was doing before,” Maseri said.
The Pope felt well enough yesterday to participate from his bed in a Mass celebrated by his secretary, said papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls. He said John Paul was running a slight fever and would spend “a few more days” at Gemelli for treatment of respiratory problems.
“There is no cause for alarm,” Navarro-Valls said.
Although age and chronic health problems have slowed the pontiff considerably from his whirlwind pace of the early years of his 26-year-old papacy, John Paul has kept a remarkably strenuous pace.
His average week is spent working on documents, making appointments, meeting world leaders and appearing before the public at least twice a week.
American Cardinal James Francis Stafford, who is based at the Vatican, said Church officials were working with concern and a spirit of prayer during the Pope’s absence.
“We don’t know how things will turn out – the Holy Father is 84 years old,” he said, quoted in La Repubblica newspaper. “We don’t know what trials God has prepared for him.”
