A Holy Week Marked by an Absence
ROME — When he made a brief public appearance on Palm Sunday, Pope John Paul II gazed from a Vatican window onto the enormous crowd of pilgrims below. He gripped his forehead as if in pain, then slammed his hand onto a lectern, in silent but evident frustration.
That was at the start of this most important week on the Christian calendar, a season that this year is unfolding largely without the pope's participation.
Barely able to speak and in deteriorating health, the pope has delegated all major Easter week sermons to other prelates. It is the first time in his 26-year papacy that he has not led the services.
The pope is using the final chapter of his life as a parable for the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics. He wants his public suffering to convey the value of human life, even in its decline. Especially during the time Christians recall the crucifixion of Jesus, the church is emphasizing the symbolic parallels between the pope's ordeal and that of Christ -- an analogy John Paul and his aides have been keen to make.
"Like Christ on the cross, the pope shows us that love can overcome sacrifice," Cardinal Julian Herranz of Spain said in a recent interview.
"We live in a world where pagan images of consumerism, egoism and overabundance are valued, where the sick and aged are marginalized, a world that wants to sweep aside those with limitations and eliminate the handicapped," said Herranz, one of two cardinals from Opus Dei, a conservative order that John Paul holds in especially high esteem. "By contrast, the pope shows us that life has dignity until the last moment."
The Vatican has not issued an official update on the pope's health since he left the hospital March 13 for the second time in less than five weeks, after undergoing a tracheostomy to place a tube in his windpipe.
But in his four brief public appearances since that day, the 84-year-old pontiff, who also suffers from Parkinson's disease, a degenerative neurological disorder, has looked gaunt and in distress. The Italian media are full of speculation about new breathing difficulties, headaches and other health problems, and the Italian news agency ANSA reported Thursday that the pope was being nourished partly intravenously.
The Vatican's decision to eliminate virtually all of the pope's public duties during Easter week suggests that his health is not improving.
- VATICAN CITY - Holy Week Underway Mar 29, 1994
- World IN BRIEF - VATICAN - Pope Plans Fourth Trip to Poland in '91 Apr 09, 1990
- Pope Improving but Easter Role in Doubt, Aide Says Mar 04, 2005
