Pope John Paul II spent a second night in hospital, breathing
through a hole in his neck, as Catholics around the world prayed
for his recovery from acute respiratory problems, while medical
experts feared the worst.
The 84-year-old pontiff was "very serene," according to Colombian
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who was among a string of prelates
who visited the pope Friday at Rome's Gemelli hospital, where he
was admitted Thursday for the second time in less than a
month.
But medical experts voiced deep concern over the accumulated
burdens on the pope's health of his advanced age, past bouts with
life-threatening conditions, the ravages of Parkinson's disease,
and a tendency to resist medical advice.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, in the first bulletin
since the pope underwent a tracheotomy on Thursday, sought to
alleviate global fears for the pope's imminent demise.
"The Holy Father spent a night of tranquil rest," according to the
statement Navarro-Valls read out to reporters at a Vatican press
conference.
"He is breathing on his own and his cardio-circulatory conditions
remain good," he said before detailing what the pope had for
breakfast: coffee, yogurt and biscuits, consumed with "good
appetite."
Temporarily robbed of his voice by the tracheotomy, the pope was
able to communicate only by writing on a notepad. Navarro-Valls
said the pontiff wrote jokingly after he came to from general
anesthesia: "What have you done to me?"
In a major indication of the real state of the pope's health, the
Vatican was to announce Saturday whether the old Polish pontiff
would appear at his hospital window Sunday to mark the Angelus
prayer.
Professor Corrado Manni, the pope's anesthetist during his
life-saving surgery after he was shot in 1981, described the pope's
latest setback as "exertion after exertion on an organism which is
undoubtedly weakened."
Manni told La Stampa: "The two episodes, yesterday's and the one at
the beginning of February, are real respiratory crises. Air is not
getting in via the airways of the lungs and therefore he runs the
risk of a cardio-circulatory arrest."
Upper respiratory infections are common among Parkinson's patients,
and the flu is their leading cause of death, said Bruno Bergamasco,
head of neuroscience at the University of Turin, where a regional
Parkinson's center is housed.
At the start of the crisis, while the Vatican offered few details
of the pope's condition, James Francis Stafford, the
highest-ranking American cardinal in the Vatican, offered a window
on how Vatican insiders were taking the news.
They hope John Paul II "won't suffer," he told the Repubblica. "We
know that there are problems with breathing. To die of suffocation
or even to experience the sensation of suffocating is something we
can all identify with. That's why a deep empathy with his suffering
is spreading among us."
Around the world, Catholic bishops urged the faithful to hold
prayer vigils for the pope following his seventh operation in 24
years.
Top cardinals set the tone, gathering in the Vatican's Redemptoris
Mater chapel to pray, including the pope's secretary of state
Angelo Sodano and the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Meanwhile, even as John Paul II battles to recover, Irish
bookmakers Paddy Power have begun taking bets on the identity of
his successor.
The company has made 70-year-old Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the
archbishop of Milan, its firm favorite as next leader of the Roman
Catholic Church.
Tettamanzi, at 5-2, is ahead of 74-year-old Nigerian Cardinal
Francis Arinze, 3-1, and 68-year-old Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino
of Cuba, 11-2.
