ROME — Pope John Paul II clung to life late Friday as his breathing grew shallow and his heart and kidneys faltered, the Vatican announced, preparing the Roman Catholic Church's 1 billion faithful for the end of the pontiff's 26-year reign.
"Christ opens the door to the pope," Angelo Comastri, the vicar general for Vatican City, told a somber crowd in St. Peter's Square, where tens of thousands prayed and waited below the window of John Paul's third-floor apartment.
Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls choked up with tears at a news conference while reading the second of three medical bulletins he issued Friday. Later, as millions around the world were summoned to special Masses for the 84-year-old pontiff, Navarro-Valls sent out an updated prognosis.
"The general conditions and cardio-respiratory conditions of the Holy Father have further worsened," the evening bulletin said. "The clinical picture indicates cardio-circulatory and renal [kidney] insufficiency. The biological parameters are notably compromised."
Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the vicar for Rome, put the pontiff's condition in spiritual terms during a homily to hundreds who filled St. John Lateran Basilica for an evening Mass for John Paul.
"The pope's faith is so strong and full, and the experience of God so intensively lived, that he, in these hours of suffering ... already sees and already touches Christ," Ruini said.
Later, about 70,000 people poured into St. Peter's Square for a rosary service led by Ruini. They held candles, sang, prayed, wept, hugged and knelt on the cobblestones. Afterward, it was announced that the square, which had been cordoned off by police Thursday, would remain open all night so people could continue praying near the pope.
After the service, participants turned to face two brightly lighted windows of the Apostolic Palace apartment where John Paul is under the care of a six-member Vatican medical team. They stood all night in mostly silent vigil, dwindling to about 100 by dawn today.
"He is old, he is ill, he has spent his life for us," said Luz Maria Sanchez, a Peruvian lawyer working on a doctoral degree in canon law at Pontifical Salesian University In Rome. "It is time for him to go see the Lord. He has suffered too much."
The Vatican signaled the end was near when it announced that John Paul had received the sacrament for the sick and dying, known as the last rites, late Thursday and had declined further hospitalization, even after suffering septic shock and momentary heart failure during treatment at his residence for a urinary tract infection.
