Vatican drama rises as pope fades

By Tracy Wilkinson
Los Angeles Times

Pope John Paul II, 83, no longer walks and hardly speaks in public, giving rise to speculation about a successor. Advertiser library photo • Oct. 1, 2003

The pope seems weak and vacant. He doesn't acknowledge what he's being told. He looks much worse.

Both assessments are offered by visitors to John Paul II these days, and both are accurate. Depending on the moment, whether he has rested and how his medicine is working, the pope can remain attentive and engaged or seem worryingly frail.

As the Vatican prepares for a high-profile ceremonial season with the pope's health in question, the world's largest and most powerful Christian institution faces an uncertain period in which top prelates are jockeying for position to influence the church's direction and the pope's succession; public policy seems adrift or incongruous; and it is not clear who's in charge.

What is clear is that the 83-year-old pope is sick. As the world saw during October celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of his election, he no longer walks and hardly talks. In public, he speaks less and less.

As he fades, other priests are, by all accounts, stepping in to fill the voids, and John Paul's role in day-to-day affairs is minimal. Afflicted by Parkinson's disease and numerous other ailments, he has little energy to stand up to the competing factions within the Vatican, observers say.

"Clearly, he is an old man. Clearly, he is a sick man. Increasingly, his responsibilities are being delegated to others, and he is not able to sustain his old schedule," said the Rev.

Keith Pecklers, a Jesuit theologian at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

The Polish pontiff always was one to delegate, never too concerned with the nuts and bolts of running a bureaucracy that parallels the White House or the Kremlin.

But there is ample evidence that John Paul's range of activities is diminishing. Fewer people are granted access to him. Those who do are allowed less time.

The pope's upcoming Christmas schedule has been curtailed: For the first time in a quarter-century, he will not name a new group of bishops Jan. 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, or baptize children in the Sistine Chapel a week later.

Once in a while, however, come signs of his personal touch. John Paul's homilies occasionally contain references that only he would make. Last month, he scolded former Polish President Lech Walesa for taking the Solidarity labor union, which the pope once championed, into partisan politics.

When he chose 31 new cardinals in September, among them were men not particularly well-known in wider church circles but who had played important roles in John Paul's life.

And he still signs off on the nominations of bishops. "We can tell it's his handwriting because the lines are so shaky," said one Vatican insider.

But he knows less about the men he is approving, and instead relies more and more on deputies to make the decisions. "They put it on his desk and he signs," another church official said.

Despite John Paul's penchant for centralizing church authority in the last 25 years, the structure of the Vatican is such that its many divisions, known as congregations and dicasteries, function with quite a bit of autonomy. Much of the church's activities grind on whether or not the pope is involved. The worry of many Roman Catholics, however, is that the bold initiatives that were once the hallmark of this papacy have disappeared.

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, chief spokesman for the Vatican, denied that its institution is adrift. Navarro-Valls said aides can anticipate and project the pope's thoughts, thus following through with what he wants whether he personally conveys it or not.

"His goals and ideas are there. They are impregnated in his collaborators," Navarro-Valls said.

Increasingly, however, ambitious prelates in the Roman Curia, or the Vatican administration, are carving out turf, and hard-line conservatives are plainly gaining ground, experts say.

The two powerful men closest to the pope are Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state, and John Paul's personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, a fellow Pole who is the gatekeeper to the inner sanctum.

Dziwisz (pronounced Jeevish) is always seen at the pope's side, sleeps in a room off of John Paul's apartment, and is remembered famously as the man cradling John Paul's head moments after a would-be assassin's bullets tore into his body 22 years ago.

By all accounts, it is Dziwisz who decides who sees and does not see the pope, and it is he who relays the pope's decisions to others in the Curia. The joke around the

Vatican is that the second Polish pontificate has commenced; some observers believe that if Dziwisz makes decisions on his own, as is suspected, he does so only in keeping with what he knows, or thinks, the pope would want.

John Paul promoted his loyal aide to archbishop in October. Among the new cardinals, one was named "in pectore," or secretly, and there is speculation that this might be Dziwisz. (If Dziwisz were to become a cardinal publicly, he could no longer serve as the pope's secretary.)