VATICAN: Pope John Paul II will stay overnight at a residence for ailing pilgrims when he visits the Marian shrine of Lourdes on August 14th and 15th, according to French Catholic Church officials.
The Pope (84), stricken by Parkinson's disease, wants to make the pilgrimage like the other ill people who go to Lourdes to pray and bathe in the waters of a grotto where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in 1858. The Polish-born pontiff will visit the shrine to mark the 150th anniversary of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which states that the mother of Jesus Christ was born free of original sin.
"The Pope will come as an ailing person making a pilgrimage to Lourdes . . . an ill man among the ill," Bishop Jacques Perrier, head of the local diocese of Tarbes and Lourdes in south-western France, told journalists this week. Bishop Perrier said the pilgrimage town in the Pyrenées mountains, which expects about 300,000 Catholics to come to see the Pope, will not take any unusual healthcare precautions for his visit.
"There won't be more than what they normally have for a visit by a head of state," he said.
The 904-bed Notre Dame reception centre, where the Pope will stay, has single, double and ward rooms for ailing pilgrims, and has medical staff on duty around the clock.
A tireless traveller during most of his 25-year papacy, the Pope now has to be wheeled around in a chair and can hardly read his prepared speeches.
He seemed so weak during a visit to Slovakia last September that cardinals openly spoke of his impending death.
But he has rallied since then and appeared stronger during a short visit to Switzerland on June 5th and 6th. This visit will include an open-air Mass and a private visit to the grotto.
The Vatican has not yet announced the visit officially, but is expected to do so by the end of the month.
August 15th, the feast of the Assumption when the Catholic Church says the Virgin Mary was assumed bodily into heaven, is the high point of the annual Lourdes pilgrimage that normally attracts 70,000 people.