Weak Pope unable to speak on Easter Sunday

Pope John Paul

VATICAN CITY - An ailing Pope John Paul appeared at his window to bless the faithful on Easter Sunday but in a dramatic episode that brought tears to the eyes of many people, he failed in his attempt to speak.

Aides had brought a microphone to the Pope's mouth. He made a few sounds and breathed heavily but was unable to pronounce any words. Aides then removed the microphone.

The Pope sat at his window for about 15 minutes listening to the end of an Easter Sunday service before he tried to speak. He looked uncomfortable and put both hands to his face.

After failing to speak, the man once known as "The Great Communicator" gently patted the arms of his chair in an apparent sign of disappointment and frustration.

"This is provoking infinite sadness and tenderness in me," said Maria Celeste Caruso, one of the tens of thousands of people in an overcast St Peter's Square.

The highly emotional scene, broadcast on live television, came after his secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, presided at the solemn Easter Sunday service for the Pope.

During the mass, the Pope's window was left open, as a sign of his spiritual link with the faithful below. His coat of arms was left hanging outside and the curtains wafted in the breeze.

Then the 84-year-old Pope, sitting and wearing his traditional white cassock, was rolled up to his window and waited while Sodano read the Pontiff's "Urbi et Orbi" message, Latin for "to the city and to the world."

When Sodano finished reading the message, a priest announced that the Pope would give the crowd a special blessing. But all he could do was move his hand in the sign of the cross.

It was the first Easter Sunday service not presided over by the Pope in the 26 years since he became Roman Catholic leader.

Pilgrims had tears in their eyes as they watched the suffering Pope, many with hands grasped tightly in prayer.

"Knowing how much he suffers and how hard it is for him to speak, for me it was so beautiful. It moved me very much," said Matthew, a pilgrim from Boston. "He's such a strong force and wonderful example for our Church."

The last time the Pope spoke in public was two weeks ago on the day he left the hospital where he underwent a tracheotomy operation on Feb. 24 to relieve severe breathing problems.

Sunday morning was the last of a string of Holy Week services the Pope skipped, an absence that tinged the most important season in the Church's liturgical calendar with sadness and uncertainty.

"This has been the saddest Holy Week that I can remember," said Sister Reina, a nun from Argentina.

PRAYING FOR A MIRACLE

Father Salvatore Murra, a priest from Argentina, was hopeful for a miracle.

"The Pope is in the hands of the Lord and that is the best place to be. I hope God performs a great miracle for the Pope. Can't you see all these prayers rising up from right here to God asking for that?," he said, raising his arms to the sky.

In his message read for him, the Pope said Easter gave nourishment to those who "hunger for truth, freedom, justice and peace."

The message decried the continuing violence around the world, saying it had left many places "drenched in the blood of so many innocent victims."

He called for "peace for the countries of the Middle East and Africa, where so much blood continues to be shed; peace for all of humanity, still threatened by fratricidal wars."

He asked God to help "the multitudes who are even today suffering and dying from poverty and hunger, decimated by fatal epidemics or devastated by immense natural disasters."

The Pope spent a total of 28 days in two stints at Rome's Gemelli hospital in February and March.

- REUTERS