Religion: Ordeal in the Vatican

The tired, 78-year-old Pontiff was in his study working on a speech when he felt the first attack of pain. It began in his lower abdomen and rapidly became more and more intense. The old man lifted the phone.

When he heard the Pope’s voice, Msgr. Angelo Dell’Acqua, acting Papal Pro-Secretary of State, rushed through the ringing marble corridors of the Vatican to the tiny room on the third floor. He did what he could to ease the Holy Father’s suffering; he had called the Pope’s physician, Dr. Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi. Also to the Pope’s bedside came his three nephews, Swiss Dr. Paul Niehans,* and his old friend, Msgr. Domenico Tardini.

Stretched out on his plain brass bed, retching in pain, the Pope seemed first to be suffering an appendicitis attack; then, as evidence of intestinal hemorrhage appeared, the doctors feared a perforated ulcer. X rays were ordered. The sacrament of Extreme Unction was administered. Gradually the pain began to subside.

Downstairs, meanwhile, a cluster of anxious monsignors waited for some word. Newsmen gathered in a courtyard. At last Dr. Galeazzi-Lisi came down. “The Holy Father’s condition is disquieting but not unhopeful,” he said, “so long as there is no heart collapse.” Misinterpreting the doctor’s last words, an excited Italian newsman breathlessly told his paper that the Pope had suffered a heart attack.

Soon the Roman papers were on the streets with the erroneous report, and the shocking news blackened headlines around the world. Most disturbed of all were those close enough to the Holy Father to know that his heart always was exceptionally strong; if that has given way, they reasoned, his last and best defense against death is gone. But next day good news came down from the small, white bedchamber—the Pope was feeling better, the X rays showed nothing alarming. The tentative diagnosis: a “gastric or ulcerous condition [caused by] high gastric acidity.” The Pontiff still insisted that the doctors’ bulletins be brought to him for his personal editing.

This week, after a few spoonfuls of gruel and a long nap, the Pope broadcast a message “live” over Vatican Radio and the Basilica’s loudspeakers. Into the microphone held before his lips he spoke with effort: “To our dear children of beloved Rome, to whom we feel as close in prayer as we are close to the Divine Master in our suffering . . . we impart, with our hearts turned to the Lord and the Immaculate Virgin, our paternal Apostolic benediction.”

But the Pope was still gravely ill, and the long, anxious watch went on—a watch in which millions of people in other faiths joined. Roman Catholics all over the world prayed: “O God graciously look upon Thy servant Pius . . . that he may profit his subjects both by word and example and, together with the flock committed to his care, attain to eternal life.”

*Who has stirred up much medical controversy in Europe with his practice of injecting and grafting animal cells to replace wornout human tissues.