Report: ‘Last rites’ administered
Italian media reported that the pope John Paul has received the Roman Catholic sacrament reserved for the sick and dying, commonly referred to as last rites.

A Vatican spokesman said he could not confirm the reports but Church sources said it was likely the Pontiff had received the sacrament, given the precarious state of his health.

The sacrament, which involves anointing the sick person with special oils, was once called last rites or extreme unction. It is now known as the Sacrament of the Infirm.

The last time the Pope was known to have received the sacrament was on May 13, 1981, the day he was shot and nearly killed in an assassination attempt in St Peter’s Square.

AGI news agency quoted an unnamed cardinal as saying the Pope was administered the sacrament earlier in the day and that he was in a “very serious” condition.

Earlier, the Italian news agencies Apcom and ANSA said the pope had suffered an alarming drop in blood pressure Thursday evening.

A urinary infection can produce fever and a drop in blood pressure as reported in the pope, said Dr. Marc Siegel, a specialist in internal medicine at the New York University Medical Center.

Age elevates infection risk
The pope’s risk of such an infection is heightened because he is elderly — which suggests his prostate is probably enlarged — debilitated and run down from the illness that recently sent him to the hospital, Siegel said.

Urinary infections tend to respond well to antibiotics, given either as pills or intravenously, and “I would suspect there’s a very good chance he’s going to recover well,” Siegel said.

Hospitalized twice last month following two breathing crises and with a tube placed in his throat to help him breathe, John Paul has become a picture of suffering. When he appeared at his apartment window Wednesday to bless pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square, he managed to utter only a rasp.

As Parkinson’s disease and other ailments have left him increasingly frail, the pope has been emphasizing that the chronically ill, “prisoners of their condition ... retain their human dignity in all its fullness.”

The Vatican’s attitude to the chronically ill has been apparent in its bitter condemnation of a judge’s order two weeks ago to remove a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged American woman who died Thursday.

Vatican Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, reacting to Schiavo’s death, denounced the removal of her feeding tube as “an attack against God.”

While John Paul is fully alert, some see parallels in the two cases.

While it gives room for refusal of some forms of aggressive medical intervention for terminally ill patients, it insists that “normal care” must not be interrupted.

John Paul set down exactly what that meant in a speech last year to an international conference on treatments for patients in a so-called persistent vegetative state.

“I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act. Its use, furthermore, should be considered, in principle, ordinary and proportionate, and as such morally obligatory.”

A papacy on behalf of aged, sick
John Paul’s 26-year 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.

The Rev. Thomas Williams, a Rome-based theologian, said there are parallels between Schiavo and John Paul, based on the church teaching that such feeding is required. “In that sense, there is a great similarity,” he said.

But he pointed out that the pope is fully conscious and running the church. Court-appointed doctors had determined that Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery before her death. Schiavo’s parents had argued that she could get better and that she would never have wanted to be cut off from food and water.

It is not clear who would be empowered to make medical decisions for an unconscious pope. The pope has no close relatives, but the Vatican has officially declined to comment whether John Paul has left written instructions.