Word: vaticans
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...John Paul, 81, who had to do the watching. Struggling with an arthritic right knee and symptoms of Parkinson's disease, the Pope for the first time in his pontificate stepped aside and let others lead several of the most important Holy Week Masses. Official word from the Vatican is that the Pope simply has a bum knee and was pacing himself through last week's rigorous schedule. But some church insiders are wondering if a line has been crossed in a 23-year term that is increasingly being shaped by the Pope's physical frailty...
Once taboo, talk of the Pope's retirement is openly heard in some Vatican circles. Though retirement is allowed under church law, no one has renounced the papacy since Gregory XII in the 15th century. After John Paul was unable to lead the Palm Sunday procession, Vittorio Messori, a Catholic commentator who has interviewed the Pope at length, wrote a front-page article in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera that offered the first open questions from church conservatives on the matter. "Even with all the trust in the Holy Spirit, can the church live with such uncertainty?" Messori cited...
...Mass were performed by prominent Cardinals. Among the annual gestures most dear to the Pope has been the Holy Thursday washing of the feet of 12 priests, symbolizing Jesus' act of humility before the Apostles on the eve of his crucifixion. But the frail Pontiff had to let Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Cardinal Sodano and France's Roger Cardinal Etchegaray do the ceremonial washing...
...Vatican official said such exceptions to papal tradition are unprecedented. "They have someone else celebrate the Mass and then flip on [the Pope's] microphone for him to say certain magic words--it's an odd usage of the Roman rite," he told Time. "If you can't do the Mass, you can't do the Mass. And there's no sense he will be able to do it next year either...
RESIGNED. ARCHBISHOP JULIUSZ PAETZ, 67, high-ranking Polish prelate; following an "inconclusive" Vatican investigation into accusations, denied by Paetz, that he had molested clerics; in Rome. "Not everyone understood my genuine openness and spontaneity toward people," he said...