Pope Ends 4-Week Stay in Hospital for Leg Injury : Recovery: He is urged to reduce hectic schedule. Vatican says he will still receive President Clinton.

Having battled his doctors to an amicable draw, Pope John Paul II left the hospital Friday to return to the Vatican and a dramatically changed papacy.

The 74-year-old Pope, who will be forced to modify his hectic lifestyle, left Rome’s Gemelli Hospital four weeks after surgery to repair a thighbone broken in a bathroom fall at his Vatican apartment. He walked without a cane the few steps from the hospital doorway to a waiting limousine.

John Paul intends to make a Sunday morning appearance to pilgrims from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square and will receive a visiting President Clinton as scheduled Thursday, the Vatican said.

“He may lean on a cane or against a table, but the Holy Father will certainly be standing to greet the President,” papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro said Friday.

Doctors, who say they are pleased with John Paul’s progress, originally estimated that he would remain two to three weeks under hospital care. They would have released him last week, they say, except that he insisted on returning to the Vatican instead of to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence south of Rome where therapy could have included swimming and garden walks.

As the price for returning directly to a hectic and more restrictive Vatican life, the Pope agreed to remain longer in the hospital, Navarro said.

“Some say the broken leg is not all bad because it forces the Pope to take time to rest; he works too hard,” said a European bishop at the Vatican.

Boston Cardinal Bernard Law was with another cardinal and three bishops who traveled to Gemelli on Friday to present John Paul with a copy of the long-delayed English edition of their church’s new catechism.

“He was in a better state than I would have expected after such a long hospitalization. He was himself,” Law said.

Looking thin but fit and obviously in high spirits, John Paul used an aluminum walker to leave his hospital room. He stopped along the way to chat for 20 minutes with children being treated for tumors.

“You have treated me very well, and I thank you very much,” John Paul told doctors as he left, “but don’t expect to see me back here soon.”

Over the years, John Paul has shown a remarkable ability to snap back from medical emergencies ranging from a gunshot wound to a colon tumor to a broken collarbone.

The leg injury, however, marked his second fall and second broken bone in five months. It sparked concern about the Pope’s increasing frailty--and speculation about a successor.

“We must pray for the Holy Father. We can see his energies draining away as he tries to do more and more,” one cardinal was heard to observe after Easter Mass, three weeks before John Paul’s latest fall.

While he was in the hospital, the Vatican denied a report in Spanish newspapers that the pontiff, whose left hand shakes, is suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

Vatican administration, largely on hold in the Pope’s absence, resumes next week with the publication of a letter Monday reaffirming a ban on female priests.

But the hospital stay has put the papal schedule badly out of sync. An unusual meeting of all the church’s cardinals was canceled this month; rescheduled for June, the conference is to discuss the state of the Roman Catholic Church and its policies as it enters a third millennium.

Cardinals are not only the Pope’s closest advisers but also the electors of his successor. It was widely expected that John Paul planned to fill about 20 vacancies among the 120 papal electors in the College of Cardinals by naming new cardinals this month.

Vatican sources said Friday, however, that the announcement would not come until December or early next year.

History’s most traveled Pope missed scheduled trips to Sicily and Belgium while he was in the hospital, and the rest of what was to have been an ambitious year of travels is now in doubt.

Vatican sources say John Paul will probably attempt at least an abbreviated visit to the United States in October, where he is to address the United Nations. But an Africa trip in September seems out of the question, and an Asian visit scheduled for January is in doubt.

Navarro said John Paul would continue therapy at the Vatican. Sources said he will probably go to Castel Gandolfo in mid-June.

John Paul’s right leg, which now includes artificial parts, will recover completely, doctors say, but never enough to allow him to ski--one of his favorite sports.

Navarro said, however, that John Paul intends to return once again to the Italian Alps in July for a week of walking that is typically the most relaxed time of the papal year.