In The Spirit...

1 hour, 16 minutes ago

By Philip Pullella and Crispian Balmer

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope John Paul II, whose globetrotting papacy inspired millions but left a divided Church, died Saturday, ending years of painful physical decline for the Polish prelate once known as God's Athlete.


"Our beloved Holy Father John Paul has returned to the house of the Father," said Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, announcing the death to a huge crowd that had gathered under the Pontiff's windows to pray for a miraculous recovery that never came. The Vatican said the Pope, who reigned over the world's 1.1 billion Catholics for more than 26 years, died in his apartments at 9:37 p.m (1437 EST), surrounded by his closest Polish aides.


As the news spread through Rome, thousands of faithful streamed to the Vatican to join those already there, paying respects to a man who helped undermine Communism in Europe while upholding traditional Church orthodoxy.


The slow mourning toll of one of the great bells of St. Peter's Basilica made the only sound to cut the stunning, tearful silence in the Vatican.


The exact cause of death was not immediately given but the Pope's health had deteriorated steadily over the past decade with the onset of Parkinson's Disease and arthritis. Earlier this year it took a sharp turn for the worse.


He had an operation in February to ease serious breathing problems, but never regained his strength and last Thursday developed an infection and high fever that soon precipitated heart failure, kidney problems and ultimately death.


"The Catholic Church has lost its shepherd. The world has lost a champion of human freedom and a good and faithful servant of God has been called home," President Bush said in a televised address from the White House.


Just two hours after his death, around 130,000 people were in St. Peter's Square, police estimated.


Necks craned up toward the lighted windows of the Pope's apartments where his once vigorous body lay.


"I can't believe that's it. I know God will provide a new Pope but we'll miss him so much," said Adrian McCracken, an Irishman who kept pressing his fingers against his eyes and apologizing for crying.


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LYING IN STATE


The Vatican announced that the Pope's body would lie in state for public viewing in St. Peter's Basilica from Monday afternoon at the earliest. No date was set for a funeral, but it was not expected to happen before Wednesday.


Italy announced three days of national mourning, while his native Poland will hold six days.


Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano will say a Requiem Mass for the Pope Sunday at 10.30 a.m. (0830 GMT) in St. Peter's Square.


The conclave to elect a new Pope will start in 15 to 20 days, with 117 cardinals from around the globe gathering in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel to choose a successor.


There is no favorite candidate to take over. The former Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow was himself regarded as an outsider when he was elevated to the papacy on Oct. 16, 1978.


In his native Poland bells rang out across the country and sirens wailed in the capital Warsaw as news of the Pope's death dashed any lingering hopes of a miraculous recovery.

"I am overwhelmed by pain. I have prayed for two days and thought that a miracle will happen, but it didn't happen and now we can only weep," said Teresa Swidnicka in Krakow.

Wojtyla, who saw his country occupied by the Nazis in his late teens, cut his teeth as a clergyman when Poland was run by atheist pro-Soviet communists after World War II.

Apart from his battle against communism, John Paul will be remembered for his unswerving defense of traditional Vatican doctrines, drawing criticism from liberal Catholics who opposed his proclamations against contraception, abortion, married priests and women clergy.

In death, tributes poured in from around the world.

"The world has lost a religious leader who was revered across people of all faiths and none. He was an inspiration, a man of extraordinary faith, dignity and courage," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

VIGOROUS PAPACY

The first non-Italian pope in 455 years, John Paul threw off the stiff trappings of the papacy, meeting ordinary people everywhere he traveled -- 129 countries and territories in all.

But as the years passed, his energy faded.

Once a lithe athlete and powerful speaker, he suffered a series of health dramas, including a near-fatal shooting by a Turkish gunman in 1981. By the end of his life he could no longer walk and his voice was often reduced to a raspy whisper.

Earlier this year, the breathing crises silenced the "great communicator" and he failed dramatically in two attempts to address the faithful last Easter Sunday and again Wednesday.

The Vatican said the Pope received the Roman Catholic sacrament reserved for the sick and dying shortly before dying.

"The Holy Father's final hours were marked by the uninterrupted prayer of all those who were assisting him in his pious death," a Vatican statement said.

While many people loved the man, his message was less popular. Critics constantly attacked his traditionalist stance on family and sexual issues.

In the United States, there was a widespread feeling that the Pope responded too slowly to sex abuse scandals that rocked the Church in 2002.

But the Pope was also an untiring advocate of Christian unity and inter-religious dialogue. He was the first pontiff to preach in a Protestant church and a synagogue and to set foot inside a mosque.

A decade after witnessing the fall of Soviet-bloc communism, the Pope fulfilled another dream. He visited the Holy Land in March 2000, and, praying at Jerusalem's Western Wall, asked forgiveness for Catholic sins against Jews over the centuries.

"We all feel like orphans tonight but our faith teaches us that those who believe in the Lord live in him," Archbishop Renato Boccardo told the crowd at St. Peter's.

Some Catholics hope the next Pope will be more liberal.

But John Paul appointed more than 95 percent of the cardinals who will elect his successor, thus stacking the odds that his controversial teachings will not be tampered with.

(Additional reporting by Jane Barrett, Phil Stewart, Antonella Cinelli, Rachel Sanderson, Raffaella Malaguti)

21 minutes ago Top Stories - AP


By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II was near death as dawn approached Saturday, his breathing shallow and his heart and kidneys failing, the Vatican said. Millions of faithful around the world paid homage, many weeping as they knelt with bowed heads, others carrying candles in prayer for the 84-year-old pontiff.


The pope "is on the verge of death," Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, head of the Vatican's health care office, told the Mexican television network Televisa. "I talked to the doctors and they told me there is no more hope."


Addressing the crowd at St. Peter's Square, where as many as 70,000 people prayed and stood vigil in the chilly night, Angelo Comastri, the pope's vicar general for Vatican City, said "This evening or this night, Christ opens the door to the pope,"


At times the huge gathering fell so silent the sound of the square's trickling fountains was audible. At other points, the crowd sang, "Stay with us!" But as dawn approached, the numbers in the sprawling plaza diminished. Many of those who stayed wrapped themselves in blankets and gazed tearfully at John Paul's third-floor windows, where the lights remained in the pope's studio and his secretary's room. The papal bedroom was not lit.


Around the world, priests readied Roman Catholics for John Paul's passing. Many expressed hope that his final hours would be peaceful.


"Now he prepares to meet the Lord," Cardinal Francis George said at a Mass in Chicago. "As the portals of death open for him, as they will for each of us ... we must accompany him with our own prayers."


The Vatican said Friday morning that John Paul was in "very grave" condition after suffering blood poisoning from a urinary tract infection the previous night, but that he was "fully conscious and extraordinarily serene." The pope was being treated by the Vatican medical team and declined to be hospitalized.


By Friday night, the pope's condition had worsened further, and he was suffering from kidney failure and shortness of breath but had not lost consciousness as of 9:30 p.m., the Vatican said.


As word of his condition spread across the globe, special Masses celebrated the pope for transforming the Roman Catholic Church during his 26-year papacy and for his example in fearlessly confronting death.


In Wadowice, Poland, people left school and work early and headed to church to pray for their native son.


"I want him to hold on, but it is all in God's hands now," said 64-year-old Elzbieta Galuszko at the church where the pope was baptized. "We can only pray for him so he can pull through these difficult moments."


In the Philippines, tears streamed down the face of Linda Nicol as she and her husband asked God to grant John Paul "a longer life."


At the Church of the Assumption in Lagos, sub-Saharan Africa's most populous city of over 13 million, about 200 Nigerians in Western clothes and bright traditional African robes sat on wooden benches, offering prayers for the pope at a midday Mass.


In Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick said he had heard from Rome that the pope was "sinking." McCarrick said he prayed that God will "take him peacefully."


The White House said President Bush and his wife were praying for the pope and that the world's concern was "a testimony to his greatness."


Karol Wojtyla became a priest in 1946, just as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe, and the inspiration he provided as Pope John Paul II helped to tear it down.


"Fifty percent of the collapse of communism is his doing," Lech Walesa, founder of the Solidarity movement that toppled communism in Poland in 1989-90, told The Associated Press on Friday. Without the pope's leadership, "communism would have fallen, but much later and in a bloody way," he said.

By afternoon in Rome, a steady stream of pilgrims jammed the Via della Conciliazione, the main avenue leading to St. Peter's. Some carried candles, while others held rosaries. Some looked through binoculars or camera lenses at the window of John Paul's apartment.

"We are near to him in prayer so that he can go to heaven, welcomed by the Lord and the other saints," said Rossella Longo, a young woman distributing rosaries to the crowd.

Tripp McLaughlin, a 20-year-old American in Rome, said "it would be a blessing if he passed on."

"You see video of him when he became pope, he was so alive, so excited to be here. Now to see him break down is just really sad," McLaughlin said.

Among those at the square Friday morning was Rome's chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, who said he came "to pray here in the piazza as a sign of sharing in the grief of our brothers for their concerns and as a sign of warmth for this pope and for all that he has done."

During the morning, John Paul had participated in Mass and received some top aides at his bedside, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.

Cardinal Marcio Francesco Pompedda, a high-ranking Vatican administrator, visited the pope and said he opened his eyes and smiled.

"I understood he recognized me. It was a wonderful smile — I'll remember it forever. It was a benevolent smile — a father-like smile," Pompedda told RAI television. "I also noticed that he wanted to tell me something but he could not. ... But what impressed me very much was his expression of serenity."

Hospitalized twice last month after breathing crises, and fitted with a breathing tube and a feeding tube, John Paul has become a picture of suffering. His papacy has been marked by its call to value the aged and to respect the sick, subjects the pope has turned to as he battles Parkinson's disease and crippling knee and hip ailments.

It is not clear who would be empowered to make medical decisions for an unconscious pope. The Vatican has declined to say whether John Paul has left written instructions.

John Paul's health declined sharply Thursday when he developed a high fever brought on by the infection. The pope suffered septic shock and heart problems during treatment for the infection, the Vatican said.

Septic shock involves both bacteria in the blood and a consequent over-relaxing of the blood vessels. The vessels, which are normally narrow and taut, get floppy in reaction to the bacteria and can't sustain any pressure. That loss of blood pressure is catastrophic, making the heart work hard to compensate for the collapse.

Even the fittest patients need special care and medicine to survive.

"The chances of an elderly person in this condition with septic shock surviving 24 to 48 hours are slim — about 10-20 percent, but that would be in an intensive care unit with very aggressive treatment," said Dr. Gianni Angelini, a professor of cardiac surgery at Bristol University in England.

Dr. Peter Salgo, associate director of the intensive care unit at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, said the pope's shallow breathing "is totally consistent with severe failure of the blood vessels to provide blood to all the key organs. Eventually you run out of reserve."

On Friday morning, John Paul asked aides to read him the biblical passage describing the 14 stations of the Way of the Cross, the path that Christ took to his Crucifixion and burial, Navarro-Valls told reporters. The pope followed attentively and made the sign of the cross, he said.

John Paul also asked that Scripture of the so-called "Third Hour" be read to him. The passage is significant because according to tradition, Christ died at three o'clock in the afternoon.

"This is surely an image I have never seen in these 26 years," the usually unflappable Navarro-Valls said.

Choking up, he walked out of the room.

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AP Medical Writer Emma Ross in Rome contributed to this story.

20 minutes ago Top Stories - AP


By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press Writer

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman who spent 15 years connected to a feeding tube in an epic legal and medical battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died Thursday, 13 days after the tube was removed. She was 41.


Schiavo died at 9:05 a.m. at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over her in what was easily the longest, most bitter — and most heavily litigated — right-to-die dispute in U.S. history.


The feud between the parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, and their son-in-law continued even after her death: The Schindlers' advisers complained that Schiavo's brother and sister had been at her bedside a few minutes before the end came, but were not there at the moment of her death because Michael Schiavo would not let them in the room.


"And so his heartless cruelty continues until this very last moment," said the Rev. Frank Pavone, a Roman Catholic priest. He added: "This is not only a death, with all the sadness that brings, but this is a killing, and for that we not only grieve that Terri has passed but we grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this and we pray that it will never happen again."


Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, announced the death but had no immediate comment beyond that. Michael Schiavo's whereabouts were not immediately known.


"She's got all of her dignity back. She's now in heaven, she's now with God, and she's walking with grace," Michael Schiavo's brother, Scott Schiavo, said at his Levittown, Pa., home.


Outside the hospice, a small group of activists sang hymns, raising their hands to the sky and closing their eyes. After the tube that supplied a nutrient solution was disconnected, protesters had streamed into Pinellas Park to keep vigil outside her hospice, with many arrested as they tried to bring her food and water.


Dawn Kozsey, 47, a musician who was among those outside Schiavo's hospice, wept. "Words cannot express the rage I feel," she said. "Is my heart broken for this? Yes."


Schiavo suffered severe brain damage in 1990 after her heart stopped because of a chemical imbalance that was believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder. Court-appointed doctors ruled she was in a persistent vegetative state, with no real consciousness or chance of recovery.


She left no written instructions, but her husband argued that his wife told him long ago she would not want to be kept alive artificially. His in-laws disputed that, saying that would have gone against her Roman Catholic faith, and they contended she could get better with treatment. They said she laughed, cried, responded to them and tried to talk.


Over and over, Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer said that Michael Schiavo had convinced him that Terri Schiavo would not have wanted to be kept alive under such conditions. The feeding tube was removed with the judge's approval March 18 — the third time food and water were cut off during the seven-year legal battle.


Florida lawmakers, Congress, President Bush and his brother Gov. Jeb Bush tried to intervene on behalf of her parents, but state and federal courts at all levels repeatedly ruled in favor of her husband.


The case focused national attention on living wills, prompting perhaps thousands of Americans to discuss their end-of-life wishes with their loved ones and put their instructions in writing. The dispute also stirred a furious debate over the proper role of government in such life-and-death decisions. And it led to allegations that Republicans in Congress were pandering to the religious right and violating their own political principles of limited government and states' rights.


In Washington, the president said he was saddened by the death.


"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak," Bush said. "In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in favor of life."


In Rome, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the Vatican's office for sainthood, called the removal of the feeding tube "an attack against God."


An autopsy is planned, with both sides hoping it will shed more light on the extent of her brain injuries and whether she was abused by her husband, as the Schindlers have argued. In what was the source of yet another dispute between the husband and his in-laws, Michael Schiavo will get custody of the body and plans to have her cremated and bury the ashes in the Schiavo family plot in Pennsylvania.





A funeral Mass, sought by the Schindlers, was tentatively scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday.

Gov. Jeb Bush said that millions of people around the world will be "deeply grieved" by her death but that the debate over her fate could help others grapple with end-of-life issues.

"After an extraordinarily difficult and tragic journey, Terri Schiavo is at rest," he said. "I remain convinced, however, that Terri's death is a window through which we can see the many issues left unresolved in our families and in our society. For that, we can be thankful for all that the life of Terri Schiavo has taught us."

Although several right-to-die cases have been fought in the courts across the nation in recent years, none had been this public, drawn-out and bitter.

Six times, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene. As Schiavo's life ebbed away earlier this month, Congress rushed through a bill to allow the federal courts to take up the case. President Bush signed it March 21. But the federal courts refused to intervene.

Described by her family as a shy woman who loved animals, music and basketball, Terri Schindler grew up in Pennsylvania and battled a weight problem in her youth.

"And then when she lost all the weight, she really became quite beautiful on the outside as well. What was inside she allowed to shine out at that point," a friend, Diane Meyer, said in 2003.

She met Michael Schiavo — pronounced SHY-voh — at Bucks County Community College near Philadelphia in 1982. They wed two years later. After they moved to Florida, she worked in an insurance agency.

But recurring battles with weight led to the eating disorder that was blamed for her collapse at 26. Doctors said she suffered severe brain damage when her heart stopped beating because of a potassium imbalance. Her brain was deprived of oxygen for 10 minutes before she was revived, doctors estimated.

Because Terri Schiavo did not leave written wishes on her care, Florida law gave preference to Michael Schiavo over her parents. But the law also recognizes parents as having crucial opinions in the care of an incapacitated person.

A court-appointed physician testified her brain damage was so severe that there was no hope she would ever have any cognitive abilities.

Still, her parents, who visited her nearly every day, reported their daughter responded to their voices. Video showing the dark-haired woman appearing to interact with her family was televised nationally. But the court-appointed doctor said the noises and facial expressions were reflexes.

Both sides accused each other of being motivated by greed over a $1 million medical malpractice award from doctors who failed to diagnose the chemical imbalance.

However, that money, which Michael Schiavo received in 1993, has all but evaporated, spent on his wife's care and the court fight. Just $40,000 to $50,000 remained as of mid-March.

Michael Schiavo's lawyers suggested the Schindlers wanted to get some of the money. And the Schindlers questioned their son-in-law's sincerity, saying he never mentioned his wife's wishes until winning the malpractice case.

The parents tried to have Michael Schiavo removed as his wife's guardian because he lives with another woman and has two children with her. Michael Schiavo refused to divorce his wife, saying he feared the Schindlers would ignore her desire to die.

Schiavo lived in her brain-damaged state longer than two other young women whose cases brought right-to-die issues to the forefront of public attention.

Karen Quinlan lived for more than a decade in a vegetative state — brought on by alcohol and drugs in 1975 when she was 21; New Jersey courts let her parents take her off a respirator a year after her injury. Nancy Cruzan, who was 25 when a 1983 car crash placed her in a vegetative state, lived nearly eight years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that her parents could withdraw her feeding tube.

Schiavo's feeding tube was briefly removed in 2001. It was reinserted after two days when a court intervened. In October 2003, the tube was removed again, but Gov. Jeb Bush rushed Terri's Law through the Legislature, allowing the state to have the feeding tube reinserted after six days. The Florida Supreme Court later struck down the law as unconstitutional interference in the judicial system by the executive branch.

Nearly two weeks ago, the tube was removed for a third and final time.

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Associated Press reporters Allen Breed, Vickie Chachere, Mark Long, Mitch Stacy and Ron Word contributed to this story.