Pope Improving One Week After Tracheotomy
by Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- After a week in Rome's Gemelli hospital, where he underwent a tracheotomy to ease breathing difficulties, Pope John Paul II "continues to improve and show progress," the Vatican spokesman said.
"The surgical wound is healing," spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told reporters March 3. The pope was hospitalized Feb. 24 and underwent the tracheotomy, in which a tube is placed in the trachea through a hole cut in the throat.
The papal spokesman said the pope was continuing his "active collaboration" in exercises designed to help him breathe and to speak.
Navarro-Valls said the exercises "are not passive," but require effort on the part of the 84-year-old pope.
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In addition to having resumed meetings with top Vatican aides and receiving
visitors, the spokesman said the pope spends "much time in both the morning and afternoon" in
the small chapel in the suite of rooms set aside for him on the 10th floor of Agostino Gemelli
Polyclinic.
Navarro-Valls refused to estimate how long Pope John Paul would remain in the hospital.
"There still is no precise date and I do not want to give a probable date given the fact that it could change positively or negatively," he said.
Asked whether it would be before Easter, March 27, he said, "It is possible."
Asked later if the Vatican's Holy Week and Easter schedule, published in mid-January before the pope got sick, would be changed drastically, the spokesman said the Holy Week and Easter liturgies "are fixed."
"The pope must decide, once he has returned, the way he will participate in these ceremonies. But at the moment, nothing has been decided," he said.
Navarro-Valls said he did not think any changes were being made to the papal apartment in the Vatican in anticipation of the pope's return, nor did he think special medical equipment was being installed.
"I do not think so because I have not seen special equipment even in his room at the hospital. As I have said from the beginning, the pope has not needed assisted respiration," he said.
The spokesman said he expected Pope John Paul to appear at the window of his hospital room and offer his Sunday blessing to people outside the hospital March 6, as he did Feb. 27, after a Vatican official finished leading the midday Angelus prayer.
The next medical bulletin is expected March 7, he said.
The pope, Navarro-Valls said, "really wants to return to the Vatican, obviously, but at the same time the pope accepts the advice of his doctors."
"Especially because for the past three days he has been able to hold his regular meetings" with his top aides and "follow the activities of the Holy See," the pope accepts his hospitalization because "he is able to fulfill his ministry and he is doing so," he said.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had told reporters March 1 that the pope spoke to him in German and Italian and was working on some papers the cardinal had taken to the hospital for him.
Further confirmation that the pope was working came from a Vatican official who said March 2 the pope was reading and initialing the papers necessary for appointing new bishops.
A March 3 papal message to members of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments was signed "from the Gemelli Polyclinic."
German Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne was able to visit the pope March 2 at the hospital.
"His voice was much stronger than I had expected," the cardinal told reporters gathered in the makeshift pressroom in the hospital atrium.
"I am happy you are here," he quoted the pope as saying.
The cardinal will host the August celebration of World Youth Day; the pope is scheduled to join young Catholics from around the world in Cologne Aug. 18-21.
Cardinal Meisner said, "My personal opinion is that the Holy Father can come to Cologne in August.
"I told the Holy Father that he does not have to speak in Cologne, but that his presence is important. The figure of the Holy Father speaks for itself, and the presence of the Holy Father in Cologne is very important," the cardinal said.
On March 2, the little square outside the main entrance of the hospital was the scene of what the Italian news agency ANSA described as a "choir competition" between young people from Poland, from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, and a group of Polish-American pilgrims from Chicago.
They alternated singing their songs and chanting -- in Polish or English -- "Long live the pope," "We love you" and "Bless us."
With the pope's regular Wednesday general audience cancelled, many of the groups that had hoped to see him at the Vatican went to the hospital instead.
They began arriving at 10 a.m., and the crowd had grown to several hundred by noon. The larger the crowd grew, the more hopes increased that Pope John Paul would come to the window of his room.
The pope made no appearance, but a Vatican official did send down some rosaries blessed by the pope; a group of children from a school in Paris was the recipients.
In addition to the school groups, six ambassadors arrived at the hospital bearing an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary for Pope John Paul.
The diplomats from Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, Romania, Cyprus and Greece said the icon was a sign of their hopes for the pope's continuing recovery and an acknowledgement of the pope's deep devotion to Mary.
Ambassadors from Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico visited the hospital March 3, meeting an official from the Vatican Secretariat of State.
Javier Moctezuma Barragan, the Mexican ambassador, said they were told the pope was doing well and that he appreciated receiving "the affection and greetings of our people."
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Contributing to this story were John Thavis at the Vatican and Sofia Celeste at Gemelli hospital.
Navarro-Valls refused to estimate how long Pope John Paul would remain in the hospital.
"There still is no precise date and I do not want to give a probable date given the fact that it could change positively or negatively," he said.
Asked whether it would be before Easter, March 27, he said, "It is possible."
Asked later if the Vatican's Holy Week and Easter schedule, published in mid-January before the pope got sick, would be changed drastically, the spokesman said the Holy Week and Easter liturgies "are fixed."
"The pope must decide, once he has returned, the way he will participate in these ceremonies. But at the moment, nothing has been decided," he said.
Navarro-Valls said he did not think any changes were being made to the papal apartment in the Vatican in anticipation of the pope's return, nor did he think special medical equipment was being installed.
"I do not think so because I have not seen special equipment even in his room at the hospital. As I have said from the beginning, the pope has not needed assisted respiration," he said.
The spokesman said he expected Pope John Paul to appear at the window of his hospital room and offer his Sunday blessing to people outside the hospital March 6, as he did Feb. 27, after a Vatican official finished leading the midday Angelus prayer.
The next medical bulletin is expected March 7, he said.
The pope, Navarro-Valls said, "really wants to return to the Vatican, obviously, but at the same time the pope accepts the advice of his doctors."
"Especially because for the past three days he has been able to hold his regular meetings" with his top aides and "follow the activities of the Holy See," the pope accepts his hospitalization because "he is able to fulfill his ministry and he is doing so," he said.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had told reporters March 1 that the pope spoke to him in German and Italian and was working on some papers the cardinal had taken to the hospital for him.
Further confirmation that the pope was working came from a Vatican official who said March 2 the pope was reading and initialing the papers necessary for appointing new bishops.
A March 3 papal message to members of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments was signed "from the Gemelli Polyclinic."
German Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne was able to visit the pope March 2 at the hospital.
"His voice was much stronger than I had expected," the cardinal told reporters gathered in the makeshift pressroom in the hospital atrium.
"I am happy you are here," he quoted the pope as saying.
The cardinal will host the August celebration of World Youth Day; the pope is scheduled to join young Catholics from around the world in Cologne Aug. 18-21.
Cardinal Meisner said, "My personal opinion is that the Holy Father can come to Cologne in August.
"I told the Holy Father that he does not have to speak in Cologne, but that his presence is important. The figure of the Holy Father speaks for itself, and the presence of the Holy Father in Cologne is very important," the cardinal said.
On March 2, the little square outside the main entrance of the hospital was the scene of what the Italian news agency ANSA described as a "choir competition" between young people from Poland, from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, and a group of Polish-American pilgrims from Chicago.
They alternated singing their songs and chanting -- in Polish or English -- "Long live the pope," "We love you" and "Bless us."
With the pope's regular Wednesday general audience cancelled, many of the groups that had hoped to see him at the Vatican went to the hospital instead.
They began arriving at 10 a.m., and the crowd had grown to several hundred by noon. The larger the crowd grew, the more hopes increased that Pope John Paul would come to the window of his room.
The pope made no appearance, but a Vatican official did send down some rosaries blessed by the pope; a group of children from a school in Paris was the recipients.
In addition to the school groups, six ambassadors arrived at the hospital bearing an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary for Pope John Paul.
The diplomats from Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, Romania, Cyprus and Greece said the icon was a sign of their hopes for the pope's continuing recovery and an acknowledgement of the pope's deep devotion to Mary.
Ambassadors from Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico visited the hospital March 3, meeting an official from the Vatican Secretariat of State.
Javier Moctezuma Barragan, the Mexican ambassador, said they were told the pope was doing well and that he appreciated receiving "the affection and greetings of our people."
- - -
Contributing to this story were John Thavis at the Vatican and Sofia Celeste at Gemelli hospital.
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