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Pope Gives a Silent Blessing for Easter

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Times Staff Writer

In dramatic illustration of his decline, a grimacing Pope John Paul II appeared before thousands of Easter pilgrims Sunday and struggled to speak but ultimately failed.

The pope has not been heard in public since his release from the hospital two weeks ago, and Sunday’s appearance was a bittersweet moment for the faithful who crowded into St. Peter’s Square for the culmination of Christianity’s holiest week.

“This was the most emotional thing in the world for me, to see the Holy Father,” said Maria Ines Saavedra, 50, who traveled to Rome from Teziutlan, Mexico. “But all I could hear from him was a little hoarse croak. I am very worried that his health is still so delicate.”

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For the first time since his papacy began in 1978, an ailing John Paul has been absent from Holy Week festivities, which began with Palm Sunday and have included major liturgical services throughout the week.

Finally, on a blustery, overcast Easter Sunday, he appeared at the window of his Vatican residence overlooking the square as a substitute, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, concluded a solemn Easter Mass on the flower-bedecked steps of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Sodano then read the Urbi et Orbi message, Latin for “to the city and to the world,” that the pope had been scheduled to deliver, at least in part. The pontiff coughed and made facial expressions that suggested pain or frustration, but he was alert and followed the message closely, leafing through each page of the text.

Sodano turned the ceremony over to John Paul for a final blessing. An aide put a microphone in front of the pope, but when the pontiff tried to speak, all that came out was a raspy sound. The aide quickly removed the microphone.

Instead, the pope made a sign of the cross, blessing the crowd below. Its members cheered and applauded when he appeared, but as he tried to speak, many people gasped and began to weep. In all, the pope’s appearance lasted about 12 minutes.

Pilgrims in the square had come from all over the world, waving national flags from countries in Africa, Latin America and Europe, and even some from Lebanon.

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Two months shy of his 85th birthday and afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, the pope has sought to use his waning days as a public testament to the redemptive nature of suffering.

“Just his presence, even without saying anything, means a lot,” said Anna Rosa Mantovani, a resident of Bologna, Italy, who had come to St. Peter’s Square with her husband and son.

“It’s a shame to see him like this, but he’s doing his best,” said Tony Jacobson, a retiree from Liverpool, England. “He’s not letting us down, putting himself through this,” agreed his wife, Joyce, “but I doubt you’ll see him again.”

The pope spent nearly a month in the hospital in two separate stays in February and March and underwent an emergency tracheostomy Feb. 24 to help him breathe. A tube was inserted in his windpipe, where it remains, making speaking and eating difficult.

Too feeble to preside over this most important week on the Christian calendar, the pope delegated to senior cardinals the Good Friday “way of the cross” reenactment of Jesus’ crucifixion and the Saturday Easter vigil that marks anticipation of his resurrection.

Vatican officials had said they thought the pope, having rested most of the week, would be able to deliver Sunday’s blessing. His inability to do so seemed to confirm reports that his condition is not improving as had been hoped.

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In the pope’s message read by Sodano, he urged Christians to avoid letting materialism obscure spiritual values, “the soul of their civilization.” He called on God to grant peace in the Middle East, Africa and a world “drenched in the blood of so many innocent victims.”

“Give also to us the strength to show generous solidarity toward the multitudes who are even today suffering and dying from poverty and hunger, decimated by fatal epidemics or devastated by immense natural disasters,” the message said. “By the power of your resurrection, may they too become sharers in new life.”

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