Pope lost 19kg since surgery

2005-03-31 20:28

Vatican City - Pope John Paul II has lost 19kg in a few weeks, a Vatican source said Thursday in the latest bad news to filter out of the Holy See as Church opinion-makers questioned whether such a visibly ailing pope should persist with making public appearances.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was "great concern" in the Vatican over the 84-year-old pope's chances of recovery.

Doctors began feeding the pontiff through a nasal tube on Wednesday, the Vatican announced, admitting that his recovery from a throat operation was "slow."

"He has lost an estimated 19kg," the source told AFP, adding that four nurses were doing 24-hour shifts to take care of the once robust pope nicknamed "God's Athlete".

The pope was visibly thinner and frail in his appearance at his window on Wednesday, and Vatican photographers and cameramen have been ordered to not do any close-ups of the pontiff during his appearances, the source said.

Church opinion-makers are divided over the papal appearances, some saying it set an example of strength and others denouncing it as "spectacle".

'Spectacle'

"By parading the pontiff and his illness, you are making a spectacle out of him for the use and consumption of the world's public opinion," lamented Father Vincenzo Marras, editor of Jesus magazine, in Thursday's La Stampa.

Others, like Father Antonio Sciortino of Italy's Christian Family weekly, believe that through his appearances the pope's "message is strengthened to the point of the being able to touch the hearts of non-believers".

It is not clear if the nasal feeding tube will put an end to his bi-weekly appearances at his apartment window.

More than 70 000 people, many of them in tears, watched in a poignant silence as the pope tried but failed to speak out in his Easter Sunday blessing. The pope, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, has not spoken in public since his release from hospital on March 13, although the Vatican says he speaks in private.

Power vacuum

But Marras underlined that the appearances not only endanger the pope's frail health, "but even more seriously expose us to the spectacle of suffering, magnifying the papal figure to the detriment of the redeeming value" of Christ's suffering.

The pope's appearances have also raised concerns of a power vacuum in the Vatican.

Top Vatican cardinals insist that the pope is completely lucid and is capable of governing the Church.

Some observers, though, have reported that the close circle of cardinals around the pope have made "a pact" to maintain the status quo until uncertainty over his health continues.

Even senior Church officials have begun to voice their concern. The bishop of the Dutch city of Breda, Martinus Muskens, said on Thursday that the situation "cannot continue like this".

- AFP