The German head of the Vatican body that oversees doctrinal matters was quoted today as saying Pope John Paul II was in poor health and that the faithful should pray for him.
"He is in a bad way," Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told Germany's Buntemagazine in an interview conducted last Monday.
"We should pray for the Pope." In an earlier summary of the interview, Buntehad quoted Cardinal Ratzinger as saying the pope was in a "very bad way".
Cardinal Ratzinger, who heads the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the 83-year-old Pope probably took on too much, but that it was not his job to stop him.
At the Vatican, the Pope received several Filipino bishops and some Polish pilgrims today, and preparations were going ahead for his weekly general audience tomorrow.
The increasingly frail Pope, who has Parkinson's Disease, was particularly weak earlier this month on a trip to Slovakia and needed help reading his sermons. Last week, he skipped his general audience because of what the Vatican said was an intestinal problem.