Private concerns about the health of Pope John Paul II became public Thursday when history's most-traveled pontiff canceled a planned October visit to the USA.
The official explanation is that the 74-year-old pope hasn't fully recovered from hip-replacement surgery, performed in April after he broke a bone in his thigh in a bathroom fall.
"It's a question of mobility, not health," says Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, adding that the trip has been postponed until November 1995 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations.
The pope was to have made his fourth U.S. visit Oct. 20-23, with stops in New York, Newark and Baltimore and a major address to the U.N. General Assembly.
But the cancellation - his second this year for health reasons - fueled mounting speculation in the Vatican and among the world's 950 million Roman Catholics about John Paul II's health after 16 tumultuous years as pope.
"In Cairo (at the just-concluded international population conference) a number of reporters interviewed me because they were preparing his obituary - which itself isn't unusual - but there's no doubt we're definitely in the twilight of this papacy," says Frances Kissling, head of Catholics for Free Choice and critic of papal policies against contraception and abortion.
The Rev. Richard McBrien, theologian at the University of Notre Dame, says the short-notice cancellation of a trip to the major media market of the world "can't be (merely) because it hurts when he walks."
"This indicates that the rumors swirling about him the last several months are probably true: that he's more seriously ill than the Vatican has indicated," says McBrien.
Top church officials rushed to allay fears.
"Once he is off the pressure on that leg, he is fine," says Newark Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, who accompanied the pope on a trip to Croatia earlier this month.
But others who have seen the pope recently say he seemed weak and frail - in sharp contrast to the once-vigorous and energetic man who loved mountain-climbing, skiing and swimming.
Zdenka Gast, a Croatian peace activist who was in a group that met with the pontiff in July, said the pope was still suffering the physical effects of surgery.
"He was very weak, pale. You could see it took an effort for him to walk. He spent a half-hour with us and it was tiring for him," says Gast. "But his mind was as sharp as ever."
After the April fall and a November 1993 mishap in which he tripped on stairs and dislocated his shoulder, there was a rash of feverish reports that he had frequent blackouts and dizzy spells, bone cancer or even Parkinson's disease.
The Vatican angrily denied the reports. But over the centuries the Vatican has always been closed-mouth about the health of popes, McBrien says, so people tend to be suspicious about its press releases.
The pope also had to forgo a planned trip to Sarajevo this month because of security concerns. It was a bitter disappointment for the pontiff, who is increasingly preoccupied with the ongoing bloody civil war raging in Bosnia.
The Vatican says the pope will keep to his at-home schedule, including presiding at a month-long synod of bishops at the Vatican in October.
And officials say he still plans to visit the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Australia and Papua New Guinea in January.
Besides concern for his health, there was disappointment among American Catholics about the cancellation.
"Disappointed isn't the word to describe it - it's like a shock. We've been so wound up about it," says Dorothy Borokos, who hoped to attend the Oct. 23 papal Mass at Camden Yards in Baltimore, where parishioners had raised $270,000 to help pay for the visit.
