As most of our news-addicted t-Kids have heard, Pope John Paul II, long suffering from Parkinson’s disease and an assortment of other ailments, including a progressive neurological disorder, now has his own feeding tube. The ailing Pontiff received a nasal-gastric tube yesterday afternoon to “improve caloric intake and improve his chances for recovery,” the Vatican said.
This new tube insertion follows a tracheotomy he received on Feb. 24, during which a breathing tube was inserted into his windpipe. Speaking through a nurse, spokesman and interpreter last week, the Pope said “he has abandoned himself to God’s will – and that of the technicians operating his artificial respirator." In another statement, he compared his own suffering to that of Jesus Christ – "except for the crucifixion part, his effortless oxygen-enriched breathing and the seemingly endless supply of morphine.”
With the additional tube, the 84-year-old head of the Catholic Church now has more life-saving machines than any previous Pope in the Church’s two thousand year history. A physician at Rome's Gemelli hospital said there is a “better than likely chance” he will even have a third tube surgically inserted into his stomach, "he's really more machine than man now." Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, a close papal associate and potential successor, said as soon as the nasal tube is snaked into the Pope’s gastric system he will administer to him liquefied communion or “Jesus Juice” – not to be confused with the “Jesus Juice” referred to recently in testimony during the child rape trial of pop icon Michael Jackson.
A dozen or more religious activists from Georgia and Florida, including former Green Beret Bo Gritz, gathered outside the hospital to support the Pope’s decision to have a feeding tube inserted. There is no information to indicate whether the Pope has a living will in effect or whether the Pinellas County Court in Florida has any legal jurisdiction within the Vatican.
