HEALTH OF THE POPE

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27638, 20 April 1955, Page 10

HEALTH OF THE POPE

Painful Ailment In Right Arm EXAMINATION BY SPECIALISTS (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) VATICAN CITY, April 18. Pope Pius XII, who is 79, is suffering from senile arthrosis in his right arm and will probably never be able to use it freely again, according to a diagnosis today. The diagnosis was made by four doctors after X-ray pictures were taken of the Pope’s right arm and shoulder last night. Among those who made the diagnosis were the Pope’s personal physician. Professor Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, and the Swiss specialist, Dr. Paul Niehans, who in the last two years has periodically administered to the Pope his “living cell” therapy. The X-ray plates were made after various ray treatments had failed to relieve sharp pain in the arm which the Pontiff uses for the act of blessing and proffering the Papal ring for people to kiss. Several times in the last three years the Pope has had to put this ring on his left hand to avoid the pain of moving his right arm. On Easter Sunday, when the Pontiff gave his blessing to 50,000 people massed in the space before the Vatican Basilica of St. Peter, it was noticed that he had difficulty in raising his arm. "No Effect on General Health”

Apart from this painful ailment, which the Pope’s doctors believe will have no bad effects on his general health, he has made what is described as a marvellous recovery from the grave collapse he suffered last December.

But his activities as the Supreme Pontiff of the world’s 450,000,000 Roman Catholics are still strictly limited, in accordance with his doctor’s advice to avoid the great fatigue which led to last year’s collapse. Members of the Papal entourage said that the Pope will probably leave his Vatican palace in the humid and steamy city of Rome at the end of May or the beginning of June to spend the summer in his hilltop villa of Castelgandolfo, on the lip of volcanic Lake Albano, 15 miles south of Rome.