Pope's physical decline seen as new gospel witness

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 6, 1998 by Teresa Malcolm

Americans who greet Pope John Paul II when he visits St. Louis in January will see an older and frailer pope, whose physical decline is increasingly discussed inside the Vatican.

"The pain is written on his face. His figure is bent, and he needs to support himself on his pastoral staff. He leans on the cross, on the crucifix," Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote in an October issue of the Italian weekly, Famiglia Cristiana. The pope's visible discomfort ends up bringing him closer to all the world's afflicted, while identifying him more closely with the suffering Christ, said Ratzinger, who heads the Vatican's doctrinal office.

The pontificate's 20th anniversary this fall appeared to push the door open a little wider on the once-taboo subject of papal health. Among the tributes published by the Vatican's own newspaper, at least three highlighted the 78-year-old pope's frail physical condition as a new chapter of gospel witness.

Ratzinger said that physical infirmity may well be a defining element for the rest of this papacy. "I think that precisely in the physical and spiritual suffering of the pope, which no one can pretend not to see, one can find a particular message of this second half of his pontificate," the cardinal said.

Ratzinger said that by not trying to hide his illness and his fatigue, the pope is carrying out an important service to everyone. "Even age has a message, and suffering has a dignity and a salvific force," the cardinal said.

Although Vatican officials are now openly discussing the pope's physical deterioration, they have yet to specify what disease the pope is suffering, except to say it is an infirmity of the extrapyramidal nervous system. The most common of such diseases is Parkinson's, a degenerative illness that often leaves patients without basic abilities of movement and expression.

Briefs, gathered from news services, correspondents and staff, are compiled and edited by Teresa Malcolm.