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Pope Paul VIPOPE PAUL VI — In February 1978Dies Of Heart AttackVATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Paul VI, the frail and quiet pontiff who for 15 years led the Roman Catholic Church through times of change and conflict, died Sunday night after suffering a heart attack, the Vatican announced. He was 80.Death came at 9:40 p.m. (3:40 p.m. EDT) in his summer palace at Castel Gandolfo in the Alban Hills near Rome.The tolling of church bells echoed through Rome as word flashed down to the Eternal City from the southern hills. Within an hour over a thousand mourners had gathered in St. Peter’s Square.The heart attack struck a little more than four hours before death as Paul, bedridden with a recurrence of his chronic joint disease arthrosis, was celebrating Mass from bed with his private secretary, the Rev. Pasquale Macchi.After the attack, the pope was treated by his personal physician, Dr. Paolo Fontana, and was given oxygen, Vatican sources saidThey said the heart condition was aggravated by pulmonary edema, or seeping of fluid into the lungs.“With profound grief and emotion, we must announce that Pope Paul VI died this evening ... in his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo,’’ said an official statement read by the deputy director of the Vatican press office, the Rev. Pierfranco Pastore.Heavy chains were dragged across the doors of the papal palace to signify that everything has halted until a new pope is chosen.Pastore said that after the attack the pontiff was given Unction for the 111, a sacrament formerly called Extreme Unction, administered to Catholics in danger of death.One of the first to rush to the pope s bedside at Castel Gandolfo after word of the attack was French Cardinal Jean Villot, the Vatican’s secretary of state and the man who now takes over the reins of the church until a conclave of cardinals elects a new pope.The sources said Villot had decided to spend the month of August at Castel Gandolfo because of fears over the pope’s health.Crowds formed in the square outside the summer palace as soon as word of his heart attack was received.Just last Tuesday, the pope visited the village of a late cardinal who had been his superior in the Vatican’s foreign service and said: “We hope to meet him after death, which for us could not be far away.”Vatican observers said they believed such papal pronouncements, which Paul made periodically in recent months, emanated more from a sense of realism about his advanced age than from any particular illness.The Vatican had announced Saturday that the pope, on his doctor’s orders, was taking a “complete rest” at Castel Gandolfo after a summer recurrence of arthrosis, a painful disease in which bones fuse at the joints. It differs from arthritis, which is an inflammation of the joints.That announcement said he would forego his noon blessing Sunday and remain in bed.Vatican observers said that was the first time in his 15-year-old reign that the pontiff had canceled the traditional Sunday “Angelus” at Castel Gandolfo because of the arthrosis, an ailment that restricts movement and can cause intense pain.Saturday’s statement made no mention of the pontiff’s general health, but sources said he did not have a fever and attributed the arthrosis attack to the humid heat of the past few days. The statement said the attack of arthrosis began “some days’’ ago.In recent months, the pope’s overall health had been portrayed as good as could be expected for a frail man of his age who worked more than 12 hours a day and would have been 81 on Sept 26.He had a serious two-week bout with the flu during Easter that required antibiotics and forced him to cancel his Good Friday Way-of-the-Cross procession for the first time. The pope had prostate gland surgery in 1968 andhis other announced illnesses since were confined to colds and the lingering arthrosis.The newsweekly Panorama reported recently that the pope had been so overcome with emotion over the kidnapping and murder of former Premier Aldo Moro, a personal friend, that two “heart stimulant” injections were given. Moro was kidnapped March 16 and was slain May 9 after the government refused Red Brigade terrorist demands to free jailed leftists.There had been speculation that he would step down at 75, the age at which he had asked other Roman Catholic prelates to go into retirement, and again at 80, the age he decreed that cardinals would no longer be eligible to vote for a new pope.But he stayed on and was quoted as saying: “Kings can abdicate; popes cannot.”Born Giovanni Battista Montini on Sept. 26, 1897. Paul was elected supreme spiritual head of the 500 million-member church on June 21, 1963, successor to the much-beloved Pope John XXIII.An anxious, complicated personality unlike the extrovert John, he combined John’s pastoral experience with the administrative experience of Pius XII, John’s predecessorPaul had spent 30 years in the Vatican Curia, the central church administration, and then eight years in Milan, Italy’s biggest diocese, as archbishop.His reign as pope was marked by dramatic conflicts over his condemnation of birth control and abortion, his insistence on priestly celibacy and his confrontation with traditionalist clerics.Pope Paul saw through to its completion the Ecumenical Council begun by John, Vatican II. It ultimately issued 16 decrees aimed at revitalizing Roman Catholicism, forging new ties of friendship with the world around the church and advancing the cause of Christian unity.There will be an official mourning period of nine days, during w hich Pope Paul’s body will lie in state in St Peter’s Basilica.
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Cumberland News
Cumberland, Maryland, US
Mon, Aug 07, 1978
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