John Paul Ii Pope

Pope John Paul II, in Kabgayi, Rwanda, called for a narrowing of the gap between Africa's urban elite and rural poor and urged peasants in this infertile nation to redouble efforts to improve the quality of their lives. The pontiff said Rwandan peasants, who make up more than 80% of the population of 7 million, have the right to demand the same health, social and administrative facilities, including credit banking, as their urban counterparts.

After nearly 30 years behind bars, the Turkish man who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II walked out of a prison a free man Monday and promptly predicted the end of the world. Now a gray-haired 52-year-old, Mehmet Ali Agca declared himself the "Christ eternal" and prophesied that humanity would be wiped out this century, in a statement passed out to a scrum of television cameras and waiting reporters in Ankara, the Turkish capital. Later, the hollow-cheeked Agca, who has spent more of his life in prison than out, was declared mentally disturbed by doctors who exempted him from mandatory military service, the Associated Press reported.

When he heard that Pope John Paul II had died, Massimo Signoracci crossed himself, murmured a prayer and waited for a call that never came. The Signoracci clan, a dynasty of morticians and embalmers whose roots go back to an old Roman cemetery on an island in the Tiber River, has ministered to the last three popes and hoped to be asked to tend to this one as well. But for reasons that were unclear, no Vatican summons came.

As a young boy in Poland before World War II, Karol Jozef Wojtyla possessed an uncommon warmth for an often reviled group of outsiders -- Jews. Like most others in his hometown, Wojtyla was Catholic. But he counted Jewish children among his friends -- attending school with them, even playing goalie on their soccer team. Wojtyla was speechless when one of them, a fellow actor in drama club, informed him that she was leaving to escape looming anti-Semitism.

Felled by a would-be assassin's bullet, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church lay close to death as he was rushed to a hospital. Floating near unconsciousness, Pope John Paul II forgave his attacker, yet somehow remained confident that he would live. "Oh, my God! It was a difficult experience," the pope recalled. Finally passing out in the hospital as doctors frantically gave him blood, he nearly died: "I was practically on the other side," John Paul said.

A tracheostomy like that undergone by Pope John Paul II on Thursday is a relatively common procedure among the elderly who are sick and having difficulty breathing, experts said Thursday, and it can be even more beneficial to Parkinson's disease patients, such as the pontiff, whose breathing is already impaired. "The immediate benefit is that it reduces the amount of air you have to move [with your lungs] with every breath by 50%," said Dr.

John Paul II, the Pope who never stops, goes back on the road again today, this time to nearby Spain for a firsthand view of a typically European struggle between old-time Catholicism and new-found secular freedoms. For the 73-year-old pontiff, the trip, his fourth to Spain and his 59th abroad since 1978, is a milestone of sorts. It is just a year since John Paul, a pain in his belly, grimly endured an exhausting week's visit to Angola. In July, he had an intestinal tumor removed.

One of Roman Catholicism's most tantalizing secrets came to an anticlimactic end Monday as the Vatican unveiled a 62-line handwritten account by Lucia de Jesus dos Santos of what she saw as a 10-year-old shepherd in a pasture near Fatima, Portugal, on July 13, 1917. The text describes a radiant Virgin Mary, a flaming sword and a "Bishop dressed in White," presumed to be a pope, who leads a sad procession of priests and nuns up a mountain through a half-ruined city strewn with corpses.

Eighteen months ago, the Vatican released a 179-page letter--an encyclical--from Pope John Paul II to the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. It was a complex, tightly reasoned condemnation of moral relativism and situational ethics--a call for strict adherence to the principle that some acts are just plain wrong ("intrinsically evil") and cannot be justified by extenuating circumstances, no matter how compelling.

Before John Paul II and his best-selling book and compact disc, before his 12 appearances on the cover of Time magazine and his internationally televised globe-trotting, the best-known, most widely covered Pope in recent times was John XXIII. But John XXIII, whose brief pontificate lasted from 1958 to 1963, consistently received far more favorable coverage than has John Paul II. "I don't think any Pope has ever gotten better press in the West than John XXIII," says E. J.

Soon after he died two years ago, Pope John Paul II was practically declared a saint by vox populi. Banners demanding "Santo Subito!" (Sainthood Now!) crowned the crowds of people who filled St. Peter's Square to mourn the pontiff. Today, on the second anniversary of his death, John Paul will take a significant step closer to sainthood.

Tens of thousands of people clutching candles filled St. Peter's Square to mark the first anniversary of Pope John Paul II's death with a prayer vigil that culminated with a blessing by the current pontiff. Polish flags fluttered in the cool evening breeze, the candles twinkled, and a choir sang hymns during the vigil, which ended with the blessing by Benedict XVI at 9:37 p.m. -- the moment that John Paul, a Pole, died a year ago.

Pope John Paul II played down his ailments and was often reluctant to receive medical treatment, according to a book by some of his closest aides, including his personal physician. The book, which hit the stands here Wednesday, also shows the Vatican knew that the late pope had symptoms of Parkinson's disease in 1991 but kept quiet about it for five years.

It has persisted as one of the most mysterious cases of international intrigue in recent times: Who shot the pope? A committee of Italy's Parliament investigating the 1981 attempt to assassinate John Paul II released its conclusion Thursday that "beyond any reasonable doubt" the Soviet Union ordered the attack that seriously wounded the pope as he greeted crowds in St. Peter's Square. The Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, was long ago condemned in the shooting and served 19 years in jail.

A military hospital pronounced the Turk who shot Pope John Paul II unfit for military service, ending days of speculation over whether 48-year-old Mehmet Ali Agca would be forced to serve. Agca hid behind a beret as he entered the grounds of the military hospital in a car, his first public appearance since he vanished after his release from a high-security prison last week.

The man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 will be released from prison this week after a court decided he had completed his sentence for the attack on the pontiff and other crimes. The ruling on Mehmet Ali Agca, who had served almost 20 years in Italy before being extradited to Turkey in 2000, took the Vatican by surprise. Agca shot the pope in the abdomen in St. Peter's Square in Rome on May 13, 1981. His motive remains unclear.

Msgr. Edward W. Clark, a priest, scholar and seminary president, has been named an auxiliary bishop in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles by Pope John Paul II. The pope also appointed another Los Angeles priest, Msgr. Dennis P. O'Neil, as auxiliary bishop in the neighboring Diocese of San Bernardino. Auxiliary bishops serve under a bishop or archbishop, who is the highest authority in a diocese or archdiocese. The papal appointments were announced Tuesday by Cardinal Roger M.

Pope John Paul II has awarded papal knighthood to comedian Bob Hope, news magnate Rupert Murdoch and entertainment executive Roy Disney--all non-Catholics--along with 64 prominent Los Angeles-area Catholics. Among the Catholics named were actor Ricardo Montalban, longtime Los Angeles City Councilman John Ferraro and hotel executive Barron Hilton. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony will induct the men and women into the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great in a ceremony Jan. 11 at St.

Pope Benedict XVI attended a Vatican screening Thursday of a television miniseries on the life of Pope John Paul II. Benedict said "Pope John Paul II," which CBS will broadcast Dec. 4 and 7, provided an important service in spreading the message about the life and works of the late pope.

ABC has moved to beat CBS to the punch in presenting a dramatization of the life of Pope John Paul II, who died in April. CBS announced weeks ago that it would unveil the two-part TV movie "Pope John Paul II" on Dec. 4 and 7, with Cary Elwes and Jon Voight playing the former Karol Wojtyla of Poland at different stages of his life. Then ABC came along Wednesday and said it had selected Dec. 1 to show "Have No Fear: The Life of Pope John Paul II," with Thomas Kretschmann in the title role.