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Pope John Paul II Is Near Death

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VATICAN CITY, April 02 (Online): Pope John Paul neared death on Friday as his health suddenly worsened, drawing anguished prayers from Catholics around the world reluctant to accept his historic pontificate was at an end.

The Vatican said the 84-year-old Pontiff had difficulty breathing and his blood pressure had dropped dangerously low.

But it denied Italian media reports that the Pope, who received the blessing for the dying after his health deteriorated late on Thursday, had died.

Sky Italia TV, quoting a report from Italy's Apcom news agency, said the Polish-born Pope had lost consciousness. "The successor of Peter, the fisherman, is dying," Chicago's Cardinal Francis George said, holding back tears.

Church officials prepared the world and its 1.1 billion Roman Catholics for the end of the third longest papal reign in history -- more than 26 years.

"The general conditions and cardio-respiratory conditions of the Holy Father have further worsened," said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls. "The biological parameters are notably compromised."

Rome Cardinal Camillo Ruini said the Pope "already sees and touches the Lord. He is already united with our sole Savior." He was presiding over mass at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the Pope's cathedral as Bishop of Rome.

Father Konrad Hejmo, a close friend of the first non-Italian pope in 455 years, said the Pontiff whose election was widely seen as helping bring down Communism in the former Soviet bloc was still alive but on oxygen.

Catholics flocked to churches to light candles and pray for the man who became Pope in 1978 and revitalized the papacy. Tens of thousands gathered in the Vatican's vast St. Peter's Square, some gazing up at the papal apartments.

"This evening or tonight, Christ opens the doors to the Pope," said Monsignor Angelo Comastri as he started a prayer vigil in the packed square.

After weeks of worsening health, the Pope developed a high fever on Thursday caused by a urinary infection. But he told aides he did not want to return to hospital, where he spent weeks before Easter after an attack of breathing trouble.
"The fact he has not gone back (shows) he is serenely carrying the cross and ready to give up and to say 'It is finished,"' said his former private secretary, Irish bishop John Magee.

Some cardinals were summoned to the Pope's bedside to say their farewells. Navarro-Valls fought back tears when he said the Pontiff had celebrated Mass from his bed as dawn broke.

Poles clung to the hope their beloved countryman and moral authority would step back from the brink of death.

"I came to pray for the Pope," said Maria Danecka, one of hundreds who crowded in and around the basilica in Wadowice, the town where Karol Wojtyla was born in 1920. Many of them wept.

"If he were to leave us, we won't have anybody to show us the way, to help us understand the world."

Churches in the capital Warsaw and the southern city of Krakow where Wojtyla was archbishop filled with worshippers. Faithful said special prayers in Asia, Africa and the Americas.

End.