Reuters
Pope John Paul IIVATICAN CITY, (Reuters):
POPE JOHN Paul II received the blessing for the dying after his health suddenly worsened, drawing anguished prayers yesterday from Catholics around the globe reluctant to accept his end may be near.
Church officials tried to prepare the faithful for the close of one of the longest papal reigns in history, after the Vatican said the long-ailing Pope had received the special communion for those near death -- and had declined further hospital treatment.
"What I'm doing now is praying that the crossing to the other life may be painless and peaceful," said Cardinal Godfried Danneels, archbishop of Brussels-Mechelen in Belgium.
SERIOUS CONDITION
The 84-year-old pope was still
conscious and in a stable but serious condition after heart failure, his spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told a news briefing as he fought back tears. He said the pontiff had celebrated Mass from his bed as dawn broke.
"The pope is lucid," he said. "He is extraordinarily serene even though naturally, he has breathing problems."
After weeks of worsening health, he developed a high fever on Thursday caused by a urinary infection. "A state of septic shock and cardio-circulatory collapse set in," the Vatican said.
Catholics flocked to churches to light candles and pray for the man who became pope in 1978 and revitalised the papacy.
Groups of faithful gathered in the Vatican's vast St. Peter's Square, some gazing up at the papal apartments.
Cardinals were summoned to the Holy Father's bedside to say their farewells in person.
"He is fading serenely," Andrzej Deskur, a cardinal from John Paul's native Poland, was quoted by Agi news agency as saying.
"They were giving him oxygen through the nose," Edmund Szoka,
the Polish-American governor of Vatican City, told CBS News. "I blessed him and he tried to make the sign of the cross ... I was sad to see him suffering."
He said the pope was attended by three doctors, a priest and several Polish nuns.
PRAYING FOR SURVIVAL
Poles clung to the hope their beloved countryman and moral authority would step back from the brink of death.
"I came to pray for the pope," said Maria Danecka, one of hundreds who crowded in and around the basilica in Wadowice, a southern city where Karol Wojtyla was born in 1920, many weeping.
"If he were to leave us, we won't have anybody to show us the way, to help us understand the world."
Churches in the capital, Warsaw, and the southern city of Krakow where Wojtyla was archbishop filled with worshippers.
Navarro-Valls said the pope on Thursday took 'Holy Viaticum'
communion, for those near death, after a sharp downturn in his health.
"He is still conscious. At this moment the situation is stable, but
significantly serious conditions remain," he said.
The pope told aides he did not want to return to hospital, where he spent several weeks before Easter after breathing trouble.
"The fact he has not gone back (shows) he is serenely carrying the cross and ready to give up and to say 'It is finished'," said his former private secretary, Irish bishop John Magee.
Pope John Paul II appears from the window of his private apartment at the Vatican, on Wednesday. The Pope failed in his efforts to talk in public for the second time in four days.
