Pope appears at hospital window to bless crowd

THE Pope made a surprise appearance at a Rome hospital window yesterday, giving the Roman Catholic faithful their third glimpse of him since his throat surgery nearly two weeks ago.

John Paul II appeared shortly before noon on a day when he traditionally holds his weekly public audience at the Vatican.

Several hundred people, including school children who had come to sing beneath his 10th floor suite at Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic hospital, cheered as he came into view.

The 84-year-old Pontiff’s left hand trembled as he waved and made the sign of the cross to the crowd.

The Pope suffers from Parkinson’s disease, which causes a gradual loss of muscle control.

The Pope wore purple vestments and sat behind a window that was closed to keep out Rome’s unseasonably chilly weather.

“Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to see the Pope,” said Eva Polyaka, a 15-year-old student from Poland.

“Today, my dream came true.”

A group of Jewish rabbis from the World Union of Progressive Judaism came to the hospital yesterday “to pray for the Pope and give him comfort”, said Rabbi Mark Weiner.

Stanley Davids, a Jerusalem rabbi said he was in Rome to express his sympathy with the head of the Catholic Church.

“We came here in support of the Pope because we have a long history of good relations with the Catholic Church,” he said.

Among the groups dancing and singing in front of the hospital were 80 children from two schools near Milan and about 40 Polish pilgrims keen to see a sign from the papal hospital suite.

The Vatican is to issue a fresh update on John Paul’s health today.

Earlier medical bulletins said he was recovering well.

John Paul II was operated on the night of his admission to the Gemelli to insert a tube in his windpipe which has eased breathing after he came down with a bout of the flu.

He has begun speech and breathing therapy.

John Paul II last made an appearance on Sunday, waving to about 300 hymn-singing pilgrims below and making the sign of the cross.

Shortly before, in a message read out by an aide to several thousand pilgrims and tourists in St Peter’s Square, the Pope had thanked Jews and Muslims for their prayers for his recovery.

A parish priest in southern Italy meanwhile published an open letter to the Pope asking him to resign “for the love of the Church and God”.

“Your illness, your relapse but above all the exaggerated insistence of the mass media ... lead me to express what a silent group would maybe want to tell you,” said Giorgio Rigoni of the small Calabrian town of Petrona.

“Many are wondering if someone is taking you where you don’t want to go.”

Rigoni said a personality cult around John Paul II was “causing panic in a large part of the Church at the sole idea that you could no longer be around”.

“We are forgetting that the Holy Spirit is the helmsmen of the boat and not the Pope.”

Vatican officials have repeatedly dismissed speculation that John Paul’s speech difficulty could force him to resign as leader of the Catholic Church despite his general frail health.

During a trip to Poland in 2002 the Pope himself signalled he did not intend to step down but would serve until death.

A half-dozen Popes have renounced their ministry in the history of the Catholic Church, but the latest dates to the 13th century and Celestin V. John Paul II has reigned for more than 26 years, one of the longest pontificates in history.