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It was just announced after the article was posted that the Pope has slipped into unconsciousness, that his breathing has become extremely shallow, his blood pressure in deteriorating, and his heart and kidneys are failing. They are reporting that the end is near for the Pope, that it could be any time now.
Fox News said:Pope John Paul II in 'Very Serious' Condition
Friday, April 01, 2005
VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II's (search) condition was critical but stable, the Vatican said Friday, and he was said to be conscious, celebrating Mass and receiving top aides, asking one to read him the biblical account of Christ's crucifixion and burial.
The statement seemed to end speculation that the pontiff was comatose, as had been reported earlier by Italian media.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls (search), at one point crying, said that the pope had requested to remain in his apartment overlooking St. Peter's Square after being "informed of the gravity of his situation."
"The pope is still lucid, fully conscious and extraordinarily serene," Navarro-Valls said. He said the pope remained "in very serious condition" with unstable blood pressure.
"He is fully conscious about the real gravity of the situation and he asked whether it was strictly necessary to go to the hospital. He has decided to remain" at the Vatican, the spokesman said.
A mass was planned in Rome for 7 p.m., or noon EST, with a Vatican statement planned just beforehand.
President Bush was briefed on the pope's condition Thursday night and again Friday morning in the Oval office.
"The president and Mrs. Bush join people all across the world who are praying for the Holy Father. He is in our prayers at this time," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Friday morning.
"The Pope is an inspiration to millions of Americans. He is an inspiration to people all over the world. And he has provided great moral leadership," McClellan said.
John Paul asked aides to read him the biblical passage describing the final stage of the Way of the Cross, the path that Christ took to his crucifixion, Navarro-Valls said.
He said the pope followed attentively and made the sign of the cross.
"This is surely an image I have never seen in these 26 years," Navarro-Valls said. Choking up, he walked out of the room.
The latest downturn in the pontiff's health developed after he contracted a very high fever brought on by a urinary tract infection and then experienced heart failure on Thursday. He received the Roman Catholic sacrament for the gravely ill and the dying once known as "Last Rites."
The pope's blood pressure was plummeting on Friday, as a result of septic shock (search). While low blood pressure is quite serious, it is not irreversible.
Italy's Apcom news agency reported Friday morning that the pontiff had fallen into a coma, but the Vatican dismissed the report.
On Friday, John Paul received several top aides, including the Vatican No. 2, Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano (search); undersecretary of state Archbishop Leonardo Sandri; the pope's vicar for Rome, Cardinal Camillo Ruini; his doctrinal chief, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (search); the Vatican foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo; American Cardinal Edmund Szoka (search), the governor of Vatican City; and Archbishop Paolo Sardi, the Vatican vice chamberlain.
The chamberlain, or camerlengo, runs the Holy See between the death of a pope and the election of a new one.
The pontiff was attended to in his apartment by the Vatican medical team, and provided with "all the appropriate therapeutic provisions and cardio-respiratory assistance," the Holy See said.
It said the pope was being helped by his personal doctor, two intensive care doctors, a cardiologist, an ear, nose and throat specialist and two nurses.
Cardinal Szoka, who is also the former archbishop of Detroit, said the pope was being given oxygen.
"As soon as he saw me, he recognized me," Szoka told "CBS Morning News" on Friday. "I blessed him and as I did, he tried to make the sign of the cross. So he was perfectly lucid, perfectly conscious, but was having a great deal of trouble breathing.
"And I don't know how long he can continue with that. They were giving him oxygen and all that sort of thing, helping him," Szoka said.
The pope's vicar Cardinal Ruini said he visited John Paul early Friday and also described the pontiff as "lucid" and "serene."
"I prayed with him for a moment which profoundly moved me," Ruini told private TG5 television. "Certainly the pope has completely left himself in God's hands. I invite all Romans and Italians to intensify prayers for him in this moment."
He said a special Mass for the pope would be held at 7 p.m. (noon EST) at the basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. The patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, also planned a Mass in St. Mark Basilica at the same time.
Navarro-Valls said in an earlier statement that the pope had experienced septic shock and heart failure on Thursday afternoon.
The pope's heart had stopped during treatment for the infection, the statement said.
Heart failure occurs when the organ lacks the strength to pump blood through the body, and indicates that the body's cardiac system is collapsing. It is not, however, synonymous with a heart attack.
Dr. Paolo Nardini, a Rome physician who is not part of the pope's team, said "a heart attack, which is very serious, affects only the heart, while heart failure signals a breakdown of the entire system, basically uncurable."
Dr. Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation (search), said septic shock "puts a phenomenal strain on the heart." He said between 80 percent and 90 percent of patients in this condition die within a few days.
Navarro-Valls said the pope followed the Way of the Cross prayer re-enacting Christ's final hours as he has done every Friday since he was a priest. He asked that the 14 stages be read to him — biblical texts which describe Christ's path to the cross, his crucifixion and when his body is taken down, wrapped in a linen shroud and buried in his tomb, the spokesman said.
The pope made the sign of the cross as the passages were read, he said.
The pope was not rushed to the hospital because he wanted to remain in his apartment, where he was treated by the Vatican medical team and provided with "all the appropriate therapeutic provisions and cardio-respiratory assistance," the Vatican said.
The pope was being helped by a fleet of caregivers: his personal doctor, two intensive care doctors, a cardiologist, an ear, nose and throat specialist, and two nurses.
In Washington on Thursday, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick (search), archbishop of the District of Columbia, called a press conference on Thursday and asked for prayer for the pontiff.
"Pray for the holy father, that he may recover and be able to communicate," McCarrick said. "If this is not the Lord's will, may he not suffer. He's going through a period of suffering. We worry about him."
At the edge of St. Peter's Square, hundreds of people gathered early Friday. A few got down on their knees to pray for the pontiff. Others, having kept vigil through the night, sat cloaked in blankets.
"There's nothing we can do but pray. We're all upset," said Agriculture Minister Giovanni Alemanno, who was in the crowd.
"I was in the car and I heard on the radio about the grave condition of the pope. I immediately thought I would come to St. Peter's," said Antonio Ceresa, a Roman.
Around the world, people of different faiths joined in prayer for John Paul.
"Catholics, fellow Christians ... will be praying for him at this time as he comes toward the end of his extraordinary and wonderful life," said Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor (search), the archbishop of Westminster and one of the most senior Catholic clerics in Britain.
In France, Muslim leader Dalil Boubakeur (search) said Muslims were praying for the pope, describing him as a "man of peace" whose stature has been a determining factor for change in the world.
In the pope's home country, Poles flocked to churches as word spread of his deteriorating condition.
"I want him to hold on, but it is all in God's hands now," said 64-year-old Elzbieta Galuszko at the church where the pope was baptized in Wadowice, southern Poland. "We can only pray for him so he can pull through these difficult moments."
The "Last Rites" ritual is the Roman Catholic sacrament reserved for both the gravely sick and the dying and involves anointing the ailing person with special oils.
Currently known as the "Sacrament of the Infirm" since it is also now done for the gravely ill, it used to be known as "Last Rites" or "Extreme Unction" because it was reserved only for the dying in the past.
The sacrament is often misunderstood as signaling imminent death. But it is performed not only for patients at the point of death, but also those facing grave illness or a serious operation — and it may be repeated.
The Rome daily La Repubblica reported Friday that the sacrament was administered by John Paul's closest aide, Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, who serves as his private secretary. Dziwisz had given the pontiff the same sacrament on Feb. 24 just before the pope underwent a tracheotomy to insert a tube in his throat at Gemelli Polyclinic, the newspaper said.
According to its account, John Paul had attended Mass Thursday morning in his private chapel, then did paperwork from an armchair. Abruptly, at 6:45 p.m., John Paul turned ghostly pale and his blood pressure plummeted, the newspaper said.
After antibiotics were administered, the Italian news agency Apcom reported without citing any sources, John Paul's condition was "stable." ANSA, another Italian news agency, said the pope "seems to showing a first positive reaction" to antibiotic therapy.
A urinary infection can produce fever and a drop in blood pressure, said Dr. Marc Siegel, a specialist in internal medicine at the New York University Medical Center.
The pope's risk of such an infection is heightened because he is elderly — which suggests his prostate is probably enlarged — debilitated and run down from the illness that recently sent him to the hospital, Siegel said.
Urinary infections tend to respond well to antibiotics, given either as pills or intravenously, Siegel said.
Hospitalized twice last month following two breathing crises and with a tube placed in his throat to help him breathe, John Paul has become a picture of suffering. When he appeared at his apartment window Wednesday to bless pilgrims in St. Peter's Square, he managed to utter only a rasp.
Later that day, the Vatican announced he had been fitted with a feeding tube in his nose to help boost his nutritional intake.
The use of the feeding tube illustrates a key point of Roman Catholic policy John Paul has proclaimed: It is morally necessary to give patients food and water, no matter their condition.
As Parkinson's disease (search) and other ailments have left him increasingly frail, the pope has been emphasizing that the chronically ill, "prisoners of their condition ... retain their human dignity in all its fullness."
The Vatican's attitude to the chronically ill has been apparent in its bitter condemnation of a judge's order two weeks ago to remove a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged American woman who died Thursday.
Vatican Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, reacting to Schiavo's death, denounced the removal of her feeding tube as "an attack against God."
While John Paul is fully alert, some see parallels in the two cases.
Under John Paul, Vatican teaching on the final stages of life includes a firm rejection of euthanasia, insistence on treatments that help people bear ailments with dignity and encouragement of research to enhance and prolong life.
A 1980 Vatican document makes the distinction between "proportionate" and "disproportionate" means of prolonging life. While it gives room for refusal of some forms of aggressive medical intervention for terminally ill patients, it insists that "normal care" must not be interrupted.
John Paul set down exactly what that meant in a speech last year to an international conference on treatments for patients in a so-called persistent vegetative state.
"I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act. Its use, furthermore, should be considered, in principle, ordinary and proportionate, and as such morally obligatory."
John Paul's 26-year papacy has been marked by its call to value the aged and to respect the sick, subjects the pope has turned to as he battles Parkinson's disease and crippling knee and hip ailments.
The Rev. Thomas Williams, a Rome-based theologian, said there are parallels between Schiavo and John Paul, based on the church teaching that such feeding is required. "In that sense, there is a great similarity," he said.
But he pointed out that the pope has been fully conscious and running the church. Court-appointed doctors had determined that Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery before her death. Schiavo's parents had argued that she could get better and that she would never have wanted to be cut off from food and water.
It is not clear who would be empowered to make medical decisions for an unconscious pope. The pope has no close relatives, but the Vatican has officially declined to comment whether John Paul has left written instructions.
