"Nothing gets things moving in Rome like a papal health scare"
In the past few years everytime the pope sneezes, reporters are on it almost as fast as they would be if it were another Jennifer Lopez wedding. Allen writes this week:
Nothing gets things moving in Rome like a papal health scare, and this week provided a doozy. At approximately 10:50 p.m. Rome time Tuesday, Feb. 1, John Paul II was rushed from the papal apartments to the nearby Gemelli Polyclinic Hospital, where the tenth floor is permanently set aside for his use. Several hours later the Vatican reported that he had been suffering from respiratory problems complicated by spasms of the larynx, and that he had been placed under the care of the department of emergency medicine as a precautionary move.
Long into the night, speculation swirled urbi et orbe, in the city and throughout the world, that a death-watch might be underway. By morning, it became clear that the illness was not life-threatening, but by then a media juggernaut was in motion. (One comic aside: Word of the hospitalization broke around 11:00 pm in Rome, at which time a substantial chunk of the city's journalistic community was at the Foreign Press Club at a dinner. I'm told that the cacophony of cell phones going off simultaneously was deafening, though I wasn't there to witness it. My cell phone jarred me from the early stages of a good night's sleep, which, alas, was not to be.)
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