Ailing Pontiff Cuts Off Speech

Pope John Paul II abruptly cut short a nationally televised speech saluting Armenia’s Christian faith Tuesday when he was apparently overcome by worsening symptoms of Parkinson’s disease at the start of a visit here.

Seven minutes later, the Roman Catholic leader was on his feet and praying aloud at the close of a prayer service at the Armenian Apostolic Church’s cathedral. But his lapse was a visible milestone in the slow deterioration of his once-vigorous health.

“Thank you, holiness, for welcoming me to your home,” the 81-year-old pope told His Holiness Karekin II, the black-hooded Armenian Apostolic patriarch, who sat beside him on one of twin thrones.

Those words were as far as John Paul got in what was to be a short tribute to the perseverance of Armenians’ ancient Christian beliefs during centuries of religious and ethnic strife. At that point, he slumped in his chair, he drooled, his breathing became audible, and his hands shook uncontrollably.

For 22 awkward seconds, the pope seemed to be struggling to recover and read on. An aide tried to take the English-language text from him, but John Paul refused to let go. The aide wiped the pope’s face. Eventually, an Armenian priest stepped up to a microphone and delivered the rest of the text in Armenian.

John Paul has suffered symptoms of Parkinson’s, a degenerative nerve disorder, for years. His hands tremble almost constantly, he walks with difficulty, his speech is often slurred, and his face has become a rigid, almost expressionless mask. He sometimes skips over passages of addresses to spare himself effort.

But Tuesday marked the first time he has appeared incapable of speech, at least in so public a forum.

The pope’s condition can vary by the hour. He looked extremely tired upon his arrival here in the early afternoon and appeared worse as he went from Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport to the cathedral in Echmiadzin, about 12 miles northwest of this capital.

After resting, he looked better at an evening meeting with church leaders at Karekin’s apostolic palace, where the pope is a house guest for both nights of his visit. He walked about 50 yards along a corridor, stopping to wave his cane in the air and smile for photographers.

Despite declining health, John Paul has kept up his globe-trotting habits. He arrived in Armenia on Tuesday from Kazakhstan, also a former Soviet republic, on the first visit by any pope to either country.

His visit here coincides with celebrations marking the 1,700th anniversary of Christianity as the country’s state religion.

The Catholic and Armenian churches split in a theological dispute over the nature of Jesus that arose in the 5th century. But the Armenian church has established friendly relations with the Vatican and Orthodox Christian churches.

About 90% of Armenians are baptized in the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Addressing the patriarch and Armenian President Robert Kocharyan at an airport ceremony, John Paul said he had come to honor the “extraordinary witness of Christianity borne by the Armenian church through so many centuries . . . of unspeakable terror and suffering.”

The pope emphasized, as he did in predominantly Muslim Kazakhstan, that religious differences should not fuel war and violence. Without mentioning this month’s terrorist attacks on the United States, he called for “peace with all men on a solid foundation of mutual respect and justice.”

Kocharyan is a former leader of the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was the focus of a war from 1988 to 1994 between Armenia and Muslim-dominated Azerbaijan. He told the pope that Christianity’s values of compassion and brotherly love have added meaning in the current times of “deplorable manifestations of hatred.”