John Paul Is Near Death; Millions Gather in Prayer

Pope John Paul II clung to life late Friday as his breathing grew shallow and his heart and kidneys faltered, the Vatican announced, preparing the Roman Catholic Church’s 1 billion faithful for the end of the pontiff’s 26-year reign.

“Christ opens the door to the pope,” Angelo Comastri, the vicar general for Vatican City, told a somber crowd in St. Peter’s Square, where tens of thousands prayed and waited below the window of John Paul’s third-floor apartment.

Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls choked up with tears at a news conference while reading the second of three medical bulletins he issued Friday. Later, as millions around the world were summoned to special Masses for the 84-year-old pontiff, Navarro-Valls sent out an updated prognosis.

“The general conditions and cardio-respiratory conditions of the Holy Father have further worsened,” the evening bulletin said. “The clinical picture indicates cardio-circulatory and renal [kidney] insufficiency. The biological parameters are notably compromised.”

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the vicar for Rome, put the pontiff’s condition in spiritual terms during a homily to hundreds who filled St. John Lateran Basilica for an evening Mass for John Paul.

“The pope’s faith is so strong and full, and the experience of God so intensively lived, that he, in these hours of suffering ... already sees and already touches Christ,” Ruini said.

Later, about 70,000 people poured into St. Peter’s Square for a rosary service led by Ruini. They held candles, sang, prayed, wept, hugged and knelt on the cobblestones. Afterward, it was announced that the square, which had been cordoned off by police Thursday, would remain open all night so people could continue praying near the pope.

After the service, participants turned to face two brightly lighted windows of the Apostolic Palace apartment where John Paul is under the care of a six-member Vatican medical team. They stood all night in mostly silent vigil, dwindling to about 100 by dawn today.

“He is old, he is ill, he has spent his life for us,” said Luz Maria Sanchez, a Peruvian lawyer working on a doctoral degree in canon law at Pontifical Salesian University In Rome. “It is time for him to go see the Lord. He has suffered too much.”

The Vatican signaled the end was near when it announced that John Paul had received the sacrament for the sick and dying, known as the last rites, late Thursday and had declined further hospitalization, even after suffering septic shock and momentary heart failure during treatment at his residence for a urinary tract infection.

John Paul has struggled to recover from a Feb. 24 operation performed to help him breathe. He left Gemelli Polyclinic hospital March 13 after two confinements totaling 28 days and remained at home this week even after a feeding tube was inserted through his nose.

“The fact that he has not gone back [to the hospital] shows that he is serenely carrying the cross and ready to give up and to say, ‘It is finished,’ ” said John Paul’s former private secretary, Bishop John Magee of Ireland.

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the Vatican’s health minister, told Mexican television that the pope was “about to die ... I talked to the doctors and they told me there is no more hope.”

In Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick said he had heard from Rome that the pope was “sinking” and that he was praying that God would take the pope peacefully.

By Friday night, many cardinals from across the United States and world, including Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, were traveling to Rome, even though they had yet to be formally summoned.

Suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease and weakened from a recent bout of the flu, the pope was especially vulnerable to the urinary infection the Vatican disclosed Thursday. Unable to fight its progression, he had a “very high” fever, the Vatican said, as well as a precipitous loss of blood pressure and blood poisoning that put an enormous strain on his organs.

Addressing reporters at midday Friday to describe the pope’s condition, spokesman Navarro-Valls was unable to maintain his usual upbeat demeanor. Asked how seeing the pontiff made him feel, he hesitated before replying in a trembling voice, “It is certainly an image I have never seen in these 26 years.”

Navarro-Valls said then that the pope’s blood pressure was unstable, his condition still “very grave.” But he added that John Paul was “lucid, fully conscious and extraordinarily serene.”

After taking part in a 6 a.m. Mass in the apartment, John Paul summoned his top aides, Navarro-Valls said, and asked that he be read two liturgies recalling the death of Christ.

The theme has had special meaning to the pope in his waning years; he has often held up Christ’s sacrifice to dignify his own suffering and that of others who are old or sick.

The first reading was the Stations of the Cross, a 14-part ritual tracing Jesus’ sentencing, crucifixion and burial. Accustomed to performing the ritual himself each Friday, the pope followed attentively and made the sign of the cross, the spokesman said.

Later in the morning, John Paul asked aides to read him Friday’s liturgy of the “third hour,” which includes a passage from St. Peter, whom Catholics consider the first pope, proclaiming the divinity of the resurrected Christ.

A portion of the Liturgy of the Hours is supposed to be recited daily by every Catholic priest. “It is what John Paul would have been saying today if he could speak,” said Father Tom Splain, a Jesuit priest from San Francisco who teaches at Rome’s Gregorian University.

Cardinal Edmund Szoka, the governor of Vatican City and former archbishop of Detroit, said the pope was being given oxygen Friday.

“He was perfectly lucid, perfectly conscious, but was having a great deal of trouble breathing,” Szoka told CBS Morning News after visiting the pope.

Cardinal Mario Francesco Pompedda of Italy, a high-ranking Vatican administrator, said the pope had greeted him with a smile of recognition.

“It was a wonderful smile,” he told Italy’s RAI television. “I will remember it forever. It was a benevolent smile, a father-like smile. I also noticed that he wanted to tell me something but could not.”

Other Vatican aides the pope received Friday included Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state and No. 2 official; Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, the undersecretary of state; Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the doctrinal chief; Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the foreign minister; and Ruini.

Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the pope’s private secretary, was with him throughout the day Friday. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported Friday that it was Dziwisz who had given John Paul the sacrament for the sick and dying, anointing him with special oils and giving a special Communion reserved for those close to death.

These men have been running the Vatican’s day-to-day operations in John Paul’s name as his health has deteriorated.

On Friday, a Vatican statement said John Paul had accepted the resignations of six bishops and archbishops and approved the appointments of 17 new ones from Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.

*

Special correspondent Candice Hughes contributed to this report.