Pope returns to Gemelli Hospital for seventh time in 26th years

Published: 2005-02-02

ROME (CNS) -- For only the seventh time in 26 years, Pope John Paul II returned to a Rome hospital room reserved for his use. Although the 84-year-old pope suffers from a disease thought to be Parkinson's, no longer walks in public and often has trouble speaking and breathing, he had not required hospitalization since 1996. Suffering from the flu, Pope John Paul was hospitalized late Feb. 1 after he experienced serious difficulty breathing. Since his election in 1978, Pope John Paul has been a patient on the 10th floor of Rome's Gemelli Hospital on six previous occasions: May 13, 1981, after a would-be assassin shot him; again in 1981, a few weeks after he was released, because of a blood infection; in 1992 for removal of a benign intestinal tumor and gallbladder; in 1993 for a separated and fractured shoulder; in 1994 for a broken thighbone; and in 1996 for removal of his appendix.

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