20 février, 2005 16:39
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6999966/site/newsweek/
'Precious' Suffering
The pope's condition is deteriorating, for all to see, and he's becoming a potent symbol for his message: that life is sacred, no matter how painful
Patrick Hertzog / AFP-Getty Images
The pope resisted entreaties from his personal secretary, Bishop Stanislaw Dziwisz (left), to seek treatment
By Christopher Dickey and Rod Nordland
Newsweek
Feb. 28 issue - The face in the window high above St. Peter's Square is small and distant and, even when viewed through a long lens, almost without expression. The voice quavers, just a few words breathed with excruciating effort, audible over loudspeakers, but only barely comprehensible. Few people can get close enough to Pope John Paul II to try to read the thoughts behind the mask of sickness on a Sunday morning, but some of those who have approached him say they've glimpsed the pain of a man with a vital mind, a man who has loved life enormously, trapped now in a body that brings him nothing but suffering. "You can see it in his eyes," says such a priest. "To be imprisoned like this must cause him tremendous agony."
And yet—because he is the leader of a billion Roman Catholics; because he is the first pontiff of the satellite and Internet age, reaching out to billions more, and because he is John Paul II, who has ruled the church for more than 26 years—in that public experience of suffering lies enormous power. And he knows it. More than 20 years ago, after recovering from the pistol shot that almost took his life in front of St. Peter's, John Paul declared that suffering, as such, is one of the most powerful messages in Christianity. "Human suffering evokes compassion," he wrote in 1984, "it also evokes respect, and in its own way it intimidates." In 1994, as age and infirmity began to incapacitate John Paul publicly, he told his followers he had heard God and was about to change the way he led the church. "I must lead her with suffering," he said. "The pope must suffer so that every family and the world should see that there is, I would say, a higher gospel: the gospel of suffering, with which one must prepare the future."
