RONALDO REAL .: НАСТОЯЩИЙ РОНАЛДО .: РОНАЛЬДО .: REAL RONALDO .: РОНАЛДУPope Succumbs to Illness Suffered at Length and in Public

	03/04/2005 Pope Succumbs to Illness Suffered at Length and in Public
Pope John Paul II died Saturday night, succumbing finally to years of illness endured painfully and publicly, ending an extraordinary, if sometimes polarizing, 26-year reign that remade the papacy. He died at 9:37 p.m. in his apartment three stories above St. Peter's Square, as tens of thousands of the faithful gathered within sight of his lighted window for a second night of vigils, amid millions of prayers for him from Roman Catholics around the world as his health declined rapidly. People wept and knelt on cobblestones as the news of his death spread across the square, bowing their heads to a man whose long and down-to-earth papacy was the only one that many young and middle-aged Catholics around the world remembered. For more than 10 minutes, not long after his death was announced, the largely Roman crowd simply applauded him. "I have looked up to this man as a guide, and now it is like a star that has suddenly disappeared," said Caeser Aturi, 38, a priest from Ghana, which the widely traveled pope visited in 1980, on a continent where the Roman Catholic church grew sizably under his reign. This morning, on a bright spring day, tens of thousands again gathered in the square for a commemorative Mass. As they waited on stones still spattered with colorful wax from last night's candlelight vigil, video screens flashed pictures of the pope bearing the inscription "In Your Hands." "Our soul is shaken by a painful fact," said Cardinal Angelo Sodano in his homily. "Our father, shepherd, John Paul II, has left us." Images broadcast on television showed government and church leaders paying their last respects as they filed past his body lying in state, clad in white and crimson vestments. He was born Karol Wojtyla on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Poland. He was 84 years old. Hospitalized twice since Feb. 1 and suffering for a decade from Parkinson's disease, John Paul's health hit its last crisis on Thursday, when the Vatican announced that a urinary tract infection had caused a high fever and unstable blood pressure. In the next day, his kidneys and cardio-respiratory system began to fail. On Saturday morning, his chief spokesman, Dr. Joaquín Navarro-Valls, announced grimly that the Pope had begun to fade from consciousness. The Vatican said today that the cause of the pope's death was septic shock and an irreversible collapse of blood pressure. His last hours were spent, Dr. Navarro-Valls said in a statement early today, by "the uninterrupted prayer of all those who surrounded him." At 8 p.m. Mass was celebrated in his room, the statement said, and he was administered the final Catholic rite for the sick and dying for the second time, having already received it on Thursday. He was surrounded at his death by a close circle of aides from Poland: his two personal secretaries, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz and Monsignor Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki; Cardinal Marian Jaworski, Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko; the Rev. Tadeusz Styczen, as well as three Polish nuns who have long worked in his residence. His personal doctor, Renato Buzzonetti, two other doctors and two nurses were also there. After a doctor certifies his death, tradition calls for the Vatican camerlengo, Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, who will run the Vatican until a new pope is chosen, to call out his baptismal name three times. He then strikes the pope's forehead with a silver hammer to ensure he is dead. The hammer is then used to destroy the papal ring, the symbol of his authority. The Vatican said the body of John Paul II would lie in state at St. Peter's Basilica no sooner than Monday. The Italian news agency ANSA reported that his funeral - to be attended by leaders from all over the world - was expected no sooner than Thursday. In the last few weeks before his death, he deteriorated to the point where he seemed, as his spokesman once said, to be "a soul pulling a body" - an example, his supporters said, of the dignity of old age and the value of suffering. Some critics said it was a symbol of a papacy in need of rejuvenation.
03.04.2005 21:12 +0400 www.nytimes.com

03/04/2005 Pope Succumbs to Illness Suffered at Length and in Public

03/04/2005
Pope Succumbs to Illness Suffered at Length and in Public