As Pope Gets Better, Controversy Flares Over Timing of Diagnosis

Pope John Paul II is making what one of his doctors called a remarkable recovery Thursday from major surgery as medical controversy flared over whether his large benign tumor could have been detected sooner.

Cardiologist Attilio Maseri told reporters at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital after visiting the Pope and performing an electrocardiogram Thursday night: “He is doing really fine.

“He got out of bed twice today. He heard Mass while sitting down. His heart and blood pressure are fine. There is no problem. This is remarkable for a man his age only a day after major surgery.”

Maseri spoke hours after the second official bulletin since the Pope underwent surgery said that postoperative recovery was regular and vital functions were normal.

The bulletin said the Pope, 72, had a slight increase in body temperature Wednesday night and had been given a sedative to ease moderate postoperative pain.

But the good recovery so far was clouded by a controversy over whether the tumor in his colon, which one doctor said was “as big as an orange,” could have been detected earlier.

The controversy flared after Prof. Massimo Crespi, head of a cancer institute at Rome’s La Sapienza University, implicitly criticized the Pope’s doctors at the Vatican.

“It was a lesion that was taken out in time but surely had been there for some time. . . . It was there for years,” Crespi, who had no role in treating the Pope, told Italian Radio.

Crespi expressed incredulity that a person of the Pope’s stature “was clearly not given preventive care.”

“These days, tumors of the colon are absolutely predictable. The examinations which are done for the prevention of these tumors are extremely simple,” he said.

But doctors at Gemelli Hospital and chief Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro rejected Crespi’s criticisms.

“I don’t think there was any neglect, either before or now,” said Prof. Luigi Candia, Gemelli Hospital’s superintendent and acting spokesman for the medical team treating the Pope.

Navarro, himself a qualified physician, said: “The Pope never before complained about abdominal pain.”

He added that examinations in the past had not detected abnormalities or symptoms of intestinal blockage and that a slight fever was detected only last week.

Navarro said the Pope underwent “partial checkups” including blood tests “more frequently” than every six months, as well as other regular, unspecified examinations.

“In this case, a tumor developed rather rapidly between two of these regular examinations,” he said.

The final analysis of the tumor, which two biopsies have already judged benign, is likely to be made public next week.