the final days

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Oct 26, 2003

The Pope [the cheering, adoring crowd] had come to glimpse -- youthfully vigorous, luminary, sure of his every move -- was gone. .... Slowly, painfully, John Paul made his way to the altar. His familiar silver crosier stabbed angrily at the red carpeting marking his path -- its crucifix, and his body, arched forward in similar agonies. No longer was his staff a symbol; without it, he would have fallen forward like any other man with a new stainless-steel hip encased in aging muscle ... having reached the platform, there was only a dull thud upon wood. And another.

from Paul Wilkes, "This Pope -- and the Next" The New York Times Magazine, December 11,

1994.