THE VATICAN: Further concern about Pope John Paul II's frail health manifested itself yesterday, when an arthritic right knee prevented the 81-year-old pontiff from celebrating all of the traditional Palm Sunday Mass in St Peter's Square.
Although the Pope presided over the ceremony, sitting in his centre-stage throne and reading prayers, a homily and a multi-lingual greeting to pilgrims, he delegated the main parts of the Mass to the Cardinal Vicariate, Camillo Ruini. Had he celebrated all of the Mass himself, it would have meant him having to walk or stand for almost three hours.
The Pope's arthritis, which has forced him to cancel several engagements recently, may cause him further problems throughout this week when he is due to preside over eight Holy Week ceremonies.
On Saturday, however, the arthritis did not prevent the Pope from addressing doctors attending an international congress on stomach and bowel diseases. In his address, the Pope called on the medical profession to treat patients with "a healthy realism", warning them against medical techniques aimed at prolonging a patient's life "at all costs", especially in the treatment of the terminally ill.
The Pope went on: "The complexity of the human being means that one must take into account not only the body but also the spirit. In this context, exaggerated therapeutic treatment may well be not only useless but also not fully respectful of the patient who has reached a terminal state."
The Pope told the doctors that sometimes they must resign themselves to the death of their patient, adding that "helping the patient accept death serenely is part of your mission".
The Pope's words were spoken on the same day that the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, criticised the British court which last week issued a controversial "right-to-die" ruling, upholding a paralysed woman's right to refuse the use of the life-support machine which keeps her alive. The Vatican daily reiterated Catholic teaching when calling euthanasia, "not a person's right" but rather "a crime against life".
Vatican commentators suggested yesterday that the Pope's words on Saturday represented neither a change of doctrine nor a contradiction of the church's traditional anti-euthanasia teachings, arguing that both over-intensive medical treatment of the terminally ill and euthanasia represent a "presumptuous" intervention in a natural process.