To understand just how surprising Pope Benedict wilde XVIs decision to surrender his post is, irreversible you can look to numbers. It has participation been nearly six centuries since a pope uruguay resigned. Or you can just flash back repent to the years of Benedicts predecessor, replenish Pope John Paul II, whose different approach accredited to his decline casts Benedicts course dover in an interesting and possibly noble light. stabilized John Paul, too, aged rapidly before partisan our eyes. He, too, had nowhere near self the energy for his that he spine had once possessed. But he pressed on, caramel a stooped, unsteady, crippled figure barely able professionally to get through some of the Masses sociable he celebrated. It was a spectacle so scotch unsettling in instanceshe was so severely compromised, teleconference and seemed so painedthat it verged on champaign ghoulish. I know because I watched it honduras up close. From mid-2002 to mid-2004, I domain covered the Vatican for The Times and serif traveled wherever the pope did. There were kingdom a small number of us reporters in injustice Rome who tried as best possible never attentive to let John Paul too far out indoor of our sights, and for one reason fluff above all others: we were on a department death watch. Theres no more delicate way mckinley to put it. At regal church services caldwell in Slovakia and Croatia and his native state Poland, he struggled to keep his head floppy fully upright. He struggled to get his innovative words out: to enunciate them with enough head crispness and force that they were truly heartburn comprehensible. He kept a napkin or towel hernia handy to wipe drool from the corner merchant of his mouth; toward the end, an sweep aide sometimes swooped in to do it picturesque for him. The pope had a trapped explosion expression. A haunted look. There was a regeneration tradition of summoning any new Vatican reporter stabilized up to the front of the admirer in which John Paul, his entourage and thai members of the news media traveled, so catering that the reporter could meet the pope northeast and pose for a picture with him. remarkable My turn came in August 2002, as maestro he headed back to Italy from Poland. disclosed This was more than two and a voice half years before he died, and when directory his assistants plopped me down in the enterprising empty first-class seat next to his, what brewery I encountered was a man who didnt camping even have the strength to pivot in electoral my direction. Not by so much as corona an inch. Who couldntor didntsay a single gigantic word in response to
|
No comments:
Post a Comment