c. 2005 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II returned to the Vatican Thursday (Feb. 10), pronounced cured of the acute breathing problems that forced his emergency hospitalization nine days earlier.

The 84-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff left Rome’s Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic hospital early in the evening in his glass-sided “popemobile,” escorted by five police cars and six motorcycle police for the two-and-a-half-mile drive to the Vatican.

His release came earlier than expected. Although he had been reported making a steady recovery, medical staff had indicated he would remain in the hospital until Friday or Saturday.

Patients waved from the windows of the huge glass and steel teaching hospital as the pope’s motorcade pulled away. At the Vatican a small crowd applauded, and the pope, who looked frail and gaunt, raised his hand in blessing.

John Paul’s abrupt hospitalization raised fears about his continued ability to lead the world’s more than 1 billion Catholics and stirred renewed debate about whether he should resign. The last pope to do so was Alexander XII in 1415.

“The acute laryngeal tracheitis, which caused the urgent hospitalization of the Holy Father, is cured,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a medical bulletin issued Thursday.

The spokesman, who has a medical degree, said that the pope’s general condition also continued to improve. He said that diagnostic checks, including a CAT scan, made in the last two days “exclude other pathologies.”

John Paul suffers from an advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative neurological condition that has affected his ability to speak and to move, but doctors have said that his strong heart and will to live work to his advantage.

The pope came down with influenza on Jan. 30 and was rushed to the hospital by ambulance on the night of Feb. 1 when he began having trouble swallowing and breathing. Doctors diagnosed an inflammation of the windpipe with spasms that closed off the larynx at the top of the windpipe.

By last Sunday (Feb. 6), however, he was well enough to be televised sitting at the window of his hospital room during the midday Angelus prayer and to pronounce a brief blessing in a weak, barely audible voice.

Navarro-Valls said Thursday that the pope can now speak in a normal voice. “I have heard it. Yes, it is normal,” he said. On Wednesday John Paul blessed the ashes placed on the foreheads of his medical team at an Ash Wednesday Mass he concelebrated in his hospital room.

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Whether the pope would be able to resume a normal schedule of audiences and meetings with aides was in question. His spokesman said the pope would “study his diary and listen to his medical personnel” before deciding his schedule.

John Paul had no appointments for next week because he always reserves the first full week of Lent for spiritual exercises with the Vatican officials who help him to administer the Church.

“I would say, recalling his other hospitalizations, that he might be impatient, naturally obedient to his doctors, but impatient to return to the Vatican and immediately check his diary of future appointments,” Navarro-Valls told Vatican Radio.

The spokesman said that the pope’s activities had not been interrupted while he was hospitalized because “when there was need to bring something to the attention of the pope,” it was done through Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the secretary of state and No. 2 in the Vatican hierarchy.

“Now, returning, the Holy Father will look at his diary and decide if something must be postponed, but I believe that as far as possible the Holy Father’s desire is to catch up on the appointments he had and that had to be postponed for a few days,” Navarro-Valls said.

The Spanish-born spokesman said a touching moment of the pope’s stay in the hospital was the unexpected visit Wednesday afternoon of a young cancer patient from the pediatric oncology section next to the 10th-floor suite reserved for John Paul.

The child, who was not identified, met the pope’s secretary, Archbishop Stanislao Dziwisz, who was visiting the children’s ward to distribute rosaries. The child reported that he had been knocking on the door of the pope’s room for two days and gotten no answer.

Escorted into the pope’s room by Dziwsz, the little boy went directly to John Paul and said, “Pope, make me well.” John Paul hugged the child, and gave him his blessing.

“Now you carry my blessing to all your friends and all the children who are in the oncology ward where you are,” Navarro-Valls quoted the pope as saying.

MO/JM RNS END