by Catholic News Service

ROME (CNS) -- For only the seventh time in 26 years, Pope John Paul II returned to a Rome hospital room reserved for his use.

Although the 84-year-old pope suffers from a disease thought to be Parkinson's, no longer walks in public and often has trouble speaking and breathing, he had not required hospitalization since 1996.

Suffering from the flu, Pope John Paul was hospitalized late Feb. 1 after he experienced serious difficulty breathing.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the pope was in the room normally reserved for him, not in intensive care, and that his condition had stabilized by the morning of Feb. 2.

Since his election in 1978, Pope John Paul has been a patient on the 10th floor of Rome's Gemelli Hospital on six previous occasions:

-- May 13, 1981, after a would-be assassin shot him.

-- Again in 1981, a few weeks after he was released, because of a blood infection.

-- In 1992 for removal of a benign intestinal tumor and gall bladder.

-- In 1993 for a separated and fractured shoulder.

-- In 1994 for a broken thighbone.

-- In 1996 for removal of his appendix.

While the surgeries may be considered routine by modern medical standards, they were exceptional moments in papal history. No modern pontiff had ever gone to a hospital; as late as 1967, when Pope Paul VI needed prostate surgery, the doctors performed it inside the Vatican.

The Vatican has been more open about Pope John Paul's health problems, but it has never divulged the details of treatment for his neurological disease or even officially confirmed that it is Parkinson's, although individual cardinals have referred to it as such.

There is no cure for Parkinson's, a fact that has fueled speculation about whether the pope might eventually choose to retire instead of serving until death.

During his 1996 hospitalization for an appendectomy, the pope blessed thousands of well-wishers from his hospital room.

"I would call this 'Vatican No. 3,'" the pope joked from the 10th-floor window above a plaza crowded with fellow Poles, Italian faithful and hospital workers.

"Vatican No. 1" referred to Vatican City, No. 2 was the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, and No. 3 has become Gemelli Hospital.