"Ten Minutes Later, He [the Pope] Would Have Been Gone"

From an Inside the Vatican Newsflash:

The Pope's condition was grave on the evening he was taken to the hospital. Here follows our reconstruction of the events

- by Inside the Vatican staff

February 5, 2005

At about 7 p.m. on Tuesday evening, February 1, the chop of helicopter blades began to cut through the still evening air above Vatican City. It was an Italian police helicopter, equipped with special infra-red heat-sensors to pick up traffic jams in Rome's streets, or to closely track a speeding vehicle in the night.

The helicopter wheeled in a tight circle not far from the dome of St. Peter's, then followed the streets along the Vatican's high walls toward the "Agostino Gemelli" hospital, about two and a half miles from St. Peter's Square.

At about 7:30 p.m., from the Gemelli's internal heliport, another helicopter lifted off and sped rapidly toward Vatican City. Within moments, it was landing on the helicopter pad in the Vatican gardens, not far from the back wall of St. Peter's Basilica, at the very heart of the world's smallest state.

An Italian doctor, Prof. Dogliani, an expert in cardiovascular medicine, hastened from the helicopter pad toward the Apostolic Palace, where for some 500 years the bishops of Rome have had their residence. The Swiss Guards, advised of his coming, allowed him to enter. Millions of Italians heard these details on the evening of February 2, on the Italian television program "Porta a Porta" ["Door to Door"] from Giuseppe De Carli, the "vaticanista" of the most important Italian television news channel, TG1. De Carli was continually on the air informing Italians and the world about the Pope's illness and hospitalization. On the topmost floor of the Vatical palace where John Paul II has his private apartment, the Holy Father was having trouble breathing. His throat was inflamed and constricted due to a bout with the flu.

With the Pope was his most trusted advisor, Bishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, 65, John Paul's personal secretary since 1965, since the days when John Paul was bishop of Krakow, Poland, and "don Stanislaw" was one of the fastest skiers on the slopes of the Tatra mountains in southern Poland, where he and John Paul first met.

Dziwisz, widely regarded as one of the most powerful men in the Vatican today because of his role at the Pope's side, suggested to John Paul that it might be a good idea to go to the hospital to have his breathing checked. The Pope, 84 years old, rejected the suggestion, decisively shaking his head.

He felt, evidently, that his situation was not serious enough to require hospitalization. He indicated that he wanted dinner served. Medical experts in Rome report that part of the Pope's breathing problem is due to his curved posture and general lack of mobility for a number of years. He has difficulty breathing because his lung cavity is under pressure, according to doctors.

At about 8 p.m., the Pope and Dziwisz sat down for a light dinner. Some minutes passed quietly.

Then, his inflamed throat irritated by eating he suddenly coughed and had difficulty swallowing. Soon, the Pope was gasping for breath. "The Pope had a strong feeling that he was suffocating," the veteran Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti would explain in "La Stampa" of Turin on February 3.

Soon, however, normalcy returned and the Pope could breathe again. But Dziwisz by then had summoned Doctor Renato Buzzonetti, the Pope's long-time personal physician.

Buzzonetti, too, urged the Pope to leave the Vatican and go to the hospital. The Pope still refused. He did not consider his condition that serious. An hour passed. An hour and a half. Two hours...

Then, another coughing spell in which the Pope sensed he could not breathe. At last, the Pope himself was worried. He yielded.

A papal ambulance -- yes, there is an ambulance in Vatican City -- left from a side entrance of the Vatican at 10:15 p.m., carrying the sufferinng Pope. (It was this same ambulance -- a 1981 gift to the Pope from then-monsignor, now-Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini -- which carried the Pope on the afternoon of May 13, 1981, to the Gemelli clinic, after Ali Agca attempted to assassinate him in St. Peter's Square.)

Continued here...