c. 2005 Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY _ A hospitalized Pope John Paul II is expected to return to the Vatican in time to celebrate Holy Week rites leading up to Easter, the Vatican said Monday (March 7).
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told reporters that there have been “no complications” from the tracheotomy that surgeons performed on Feb. 24, inserting a tube into the throat of the 84-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff to relieve severe breathing problems. It was the second time in a month that he was hospitalized for the complaint, which was blamed on influenza.
Noting that Palm Sunday, which opens Holy Week on March 20, was still 13 days away, Navarro-Valls said, “We hope that the Holy Father will pass Holy Week in the Vatican.”
“The doctors will decide the date in which the pontiff can be discharged . . .,” the spokesman said. “What I can tell you is that presumably the pope will return to the Vatican for the start of the celebrations.”
The pope’s speaking continues to improve, “thanks to the daily rehabilitation sessions,” the spokesman said. But he said that doctors had advised the pope to exercise a “prudent limitation” in speaking to allow his larynx to heal.
Navarro-Valls said that the breathing tube remained in the pope’s throat “for now” and that his doctors will “decide if and when to remove it.”
Navarro-Valls reiterated his statement of last Friday that John Paul would decide “the formalities” of his participation in Holy Week and Easter rites only after he returned to the Vatican.
Easter, which celebrates the belief in Christ’s resurrection following his death on the cross, is the high point of the Christian calendar and the most demanding time of the year for the pope.
Last year, he presided over Masses in St. Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday and St. Peter’s Basilica on Holy Thursday, a torch-lit Way of the Cross procession at Rome’s Colosseum on Good Friday and an Easter eve Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Holy Saturday.
On Easter Sunday, he delivered his traditional “urbi et orbi” message to Rome and the world and offered Easter greetings in more than 60 languages in a ceremony televised worldwide from St. Peter’s Square.
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On Sunday (March 6), John Paul appeared at a window of his 10th floor suite in the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic hospital at noon to give a silent blessing, which was televised to thousands of pilgrims attending the Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square.
Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, deputy secretary of state, led the midday prayer from the steps of St. Peter’s Square and read a brief message from John Paul, thanking Catholics, ecumenical delegations and members of other religions, especially Jews and Muslims, for their concern over his health.
“This is for me a comforting sign for which I give thanks to God,” the pope said.
On Saturday, John Paul sent a message to university students attending prayer vigils, linked by satellite television, in Bari, Italy, Berlin, Bucharest, Lisbon, Zagreb, London, Tirana, Madrid and Kiev. The vigils were part of preparations for World Youth Day, which the pope had planned to lead in Cologne, Germany, in August.
“Happy Easter and happy road to Cologne,” John Paul said in the message, which was read by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope’s vicar general for Rome.
MO/JL END RNS
