Candles lit in New York St Patricks
A Nuns hand of hope extended to Gemelli Hospital
Pontiff is taken off respirator
by Jane Barrett And Phil Stewart in Rome
February 25, 2005
From: Reuters
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12366209-2,00.html
POPE John Paul II is fighting back from emergency surgery to relieve acute breathing problems, leaving the world to wonder how much longer one of the most eventful papacies in history can continue.
He is now breathing without the aid of a respirator after spending his first night in hospital following a tracheotomy, Italy's ANSA news agency reported tonight.
ANSA quoted an unsourced report who said the Pope was breathing on his own after earlier being connected to an artificial respirator.
The Pope, 84, was rushed to hospital yesterday, for the second time this, with a relapse of influenza.
Doctors performed a tracheotomy in the evening. The windpipe surgery prevented him from choking and allowed air to flow directly to his lungs.
Medical experts said the operation to open the Pope's throat showed he was extremely ill, and they warned there was a "significant likelihood" he could develop pneumonia.
The Vatican is due to release a bulletin on the pope's condition around midday (2200 AEDT).
"A severe pneumonia can easily be life threatening in someone of his age and condition," Dr Paul Larson, assistant professor of neurosurgery at University of California, San Francisco Medical Centre, said.
The Vatican said the tracheotomy had been successful and the Pope, who also has Parkinson's disease and arthritis, was recovering normally in a specially equipped room at the Gemelli Hospital.
Italian news agency ANSA reported the operation was conducted under a general anaesthetic, and the Pope needed a respirator afterwards.
Doctors, however, said use of a small ventilator was part of a normal tracheotomy procedure.
As messages of support arrived from prime ministers and presidents from Australia to the US, commentators heaped praise on the Pope, who came from a poor Polish town and has played as much of a political role as a spiritual one during his 26-year reign.
"The Roman pontificate has become the main international mouthpiece for universal values, values that for centuries were spurned by the Church," Italy's top-selling newspaper Corriere della Sera reported today.
The man known as the Church's great communicator would not be able to speak for some weeks, doctors said, and even then he would need a device to help him form sounds.
"It's very worrying," hospital worker Tiziana said on her way out of the clinic's chapel, where she had prayed for the Pope.
"He's just a human being even if he's an incredible individual."
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's top aide said he had seen the Pope after his surgery, and the pontiff had waved.
"He was well and calm," Gianni Letta said. "Doctors are very satisfied with how the Pope withstood surgery and with the first few hours of the immediate post-operative period."
Mr Letta told reporters the Pope had joked with doctors ahead of the tracheotomy after being told that it would be a small operation.
"Depends what you mean by small," he said.
The struggle to breathe is the latest health battle the Pope has fought since he assumed the papal throne in 1978.
One of the most active popes in history, he played a hand in the fall of communism, spoke out against the war in Iraq, fought for human rights and called for debt relief for poor countries.
But many have criticised the pontiff for his conservative views on contraception, gay marriage and women priests.
The Pope's recurrent illnesses over the past few years have also raised questions as to whether the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics is fit to rule or whether he should resign.
Vatican officials have said he is very much in control and that any resignation will be "up to (his) conscience".
In his weekly address on Sunday, the Pope said the call to "look after the flock" was "particularly alive" in him.
However, the picture of the white-clad Pope slumped in his throne laboriously waving at the faithful has become a regular feature of Sundays at the Vatican - a far cry from the youthful Karol Wojtyla nicknamed "God's athlete" in his early papacy.
But his weakness has also been an encouragement to the elderly, living proof of his preaching that human life is to be valued regardless of physical frailty.
The Pope spent 10 days in hospital earlier this month, struck by flu.
His return yesterday marked the 10th time he has been hospitalised since becoming Pope, including once when he was shot during an attempted assassination in St Peter's Square.
- with Agence France-Presse
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