On May 28, 2002, the New York Times (
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"John Paul, Hemmed In at Twilight of His Papacy
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: May 26, 2002
SOFIA, Bulgaria, May 25— Visiting an ancient, remote Orthodox monastery tended by six monks, Pope John Paul II today praised those who battle ''the evil suggestions that the demon tries to plant in their hearts.'' The monastic life, he said, is a ''secret and interior art.''
The pope is making his first foreign trip since child abuse scandals rocked the Roman Catholic Church. His pilgrimage to the ninth-century monastery of St. John of Rila was one way to remind followers that the rule of clerical chastity is inviolable.
But it was an elliptical message in a trip dedicated to his favorite agenda: mending relations with the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The physical handicaps of the pope, 82, are now so debilitating and so obvious that two cardinals recently predicted that he would resign if he felt unable to continue. This journey shows his determination to go on. His difficulty in doing so underscores that in many ways, John Paul has already put aside many of the functions of the job.
John Paul has not given up the keys of St. Peter, but his is beginning to look like an emeritus papacy.
Day-to-day Vatican decision-making was handed over to deputies several years ago. At his one mass in Azerbaijan earlier in this trip, the pope was too weak to give communion. He cannot walk unassisted. He talks with such difficulty that interpreters read most of his speeches.
In recent years, church officials have described the Holy See as being in a holding pattern, which might be less noteworthy were it not for the crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States darkening the twilight of John Paul's 23-year-papacy.
These days, the pope is focused on the kinds of special projects embraced by former presidents or honorary chairmen of the board.
Two years ago, he overcame cardinals' objections to carry out what he considered a hallmark of his papacy: on the eve of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he issued a sweeping apology for the errors of the Catholic church going back 2,000 years.
Now, John Paul has returned to the road to pursue what he views as a last piece of unfinished business: ending the 1,000-year schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Few of his aides in Rome share his dream as intensely. Racing against time, the pope is setting down footprints all across the former Soviet empire that he hopes a successor will not dare ignore.
But his frailty frightens people. ''This mission is his wish,'' Metropolitan Simeon, the head of the Orthodox Church in Central and Western Europe and a member of the Bulgarian Orthodox Synod, said admiringly after meeting the pope. ''But I think the people around him should tell him he must stop. He is suffering like Christ.''
Even in his prime, the Polish pope, culturally and intellectually girded for battle against Communism and theological drift, would have been ill prepared to confront hidden, and to him unfathomable, lapses within the Catholic leadership. Innovations or institutional changes that could clean house and address the child-abuse crisis at its roots are, Vatican officials say, the task of a successor.
The pope intends to visit Canada and Mexico in July, but has not yet announced any plans to visit the nation in between, despite the anguish of his flock there. President Bush has said he would like the pope to visit the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York, and that might prompt the pope to add a stop in the United States.
Yet even his top aides describe his papacy in valedictory tones.
''We are all concerned about his health,'' said Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany, who handles ecumenical affairs and accompanied the pope to Bulgaria. ''But the pope is an excellent example that an old person has value, something our society too often forgets.''
The pope, who had to be persuaded by American cardinals to hold a summit meeting on child abuse in the church last month, has not commented on this week's revelations about Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, who resigned after acknowledging he had paid $450,000 to settle a claim that he sexually assaulted a man two decades ago.
For now, at least, Vatican aides traveling with the pope understandably want to keep the latest American scandal from diverting attention from the papal journey. But in doing so they have a way of painting the pope as a passive observer. Asked if the pope was informed of the charges against Bishop Weakland, the Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, replied, ''He reads the newspapers.''
Another reason for silence on the abuse is the climate in Rome, where Italian cardinals and bishops are insulated by a sense of immunity. Cardinal Camillo Ruini assured his fellow clerics last week that sexual abuse of minors was ''extremely rare'' in Italy.
Privately, some Vatican officials concede that there is vulnerability throughout the church, and that the Vatican is no exception. ''Nobody is eager to begin the kind of scrutiny that would expose their own friends and colleagues,'' said one Vatican official in Rome.
Certainly, the pope is in no condition to begin it. For now, at least, his mind is tuned to the East. In Baku, he celebrated mass for Azerbaijan's 150 or so Catholics, marking the passing of Communism in a country that was once a Soviet republic. Here in Sofia, he tried to close a chapter of cold war history and lift Bulgarians' morale by assuring their president that he did not believe the Bulgarian Secret Service was involved in the plot to kill him in 1981. He presented Patriarch Maxim with the relics of St. Dasius, who was martyred in Bulgaria in the fourth century, and offered Bulgarian Orthodox believers their own church next to the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
John Paul seems to draw energy from his incursions into Orthodox, former Communist countries. He was undaunted even though Patriarch Maxim, leader of the Orthodox church in Bulgaria, echoing his counterparts in Georgia and Ukraine, did not bend to the pope's overtures. Maxim, 87, stiffly assured the pope that unity would come as soon as Christian truth was accepted by all as ''preserved and proclaimed by the Orthodox Church.''
Orthodox leaders did not raise the pedophilia scandals with the pope, but they, too, had read the newspapers. ''We discussed it in our seminaries,'' Archimandrite Sioniy, rector of the Orthodox seminary in Sofia, said as he stood in the monastery awaiting the pope. ''If Catholic priests could marry and have families, as we do, then perhaps the problem would not be so great.''
Photo: Pope John Paul II and Father Ioan, the leader of the St. John of Rila Eastern Orthodox monastery, met yesterday in Sofia, Bulgaria. (Agence France-Presse)"