Vatican Calls John Paul's Condition 'Very Grave'

"This morning the condition of the Holy Father is very grave," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a medical bulletin, describing sudden new health setbacks two days after disclosing that the 84-year-old pontiff was getting nutrition through a feeding tube.

Rather than return to the hospital, the pope had chosen to remain in his Vatican apartment, where he had been revived by a six-member medical team, put on antibiotics and provided with "all the appropriate therapeutic provisions and cardio-respiratory assistance," the bulletin said.

This morning, John Paul participated in a 6 a.m. Mass, surrounded by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, and other top aides, Navarro-Valls said, adding that the pope was "conscious, lucid and serene." The spokesman confirmed television reports that the pope had received the sacrament commonly known as last rites on Thursday evening, including the Holy Viaticum, Communion reserved for those close to death.

The mood among senior church officials was gloomy.

"He is approaching, as far as a person can tell, the end of his life," Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, archbishop of Vienna, told the Austrian news agency APA.

The increasingly gaunt John Paul has been struggling to recover from a Feb. 24 tracheostomy that was performed to help him breathe.

Since leaving Gemelli Polyclinic hospital March 13, after two confinements totaling 28 days in two months, he has been unable to utter even the briefest of blessings.

The pontiff, who also suffers from Parkinson's disease, missed Easter celebrations for the first time in his 26 years as leader of the world's 1 billion Catholics.

Today's official statement on the pope's health was the third in as many days, after a silence of nearly three weeks.

Navarro-Valls issued a terse announcement Thursday of the pope's urinary infection and fever. He said John Paul was being treated with "appropriate antibiotic therapy" while his condition was "closely watched" by his Vatican medical team.

Another bulletin came early this morning. After the urinary infection, Navarro-Valls said, the pope's condition stabilized but later deteriorated. "A state of septic shock and cardio-circulatory collapse set in," he said.