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Itinerary to 2003 shows Pope plans to keep going Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent Thursday February 15, 2001 The Guardian The Pope may be past 80 and ill with Parkinson's disease but the Vatican has demonstrated that he has no plans to slow down by publishing his itinerary to the end of 2003. The most widely travelled, and fifth-longest-reigning, pontiff is planning trips to Toronto and Manila, and hopes to get to Moscow and Beijing before too long as well. Observers who have seen him at close quarters say he is very bowed, his head sunk against his chest, tremors in his hands, and he walks with a stick. His voice is reduced to an almost inaudible mumble. There has been periodic speculation that John Paul II may resign - something no pope has done voluntarily since the middle ages. It was thought that the Catholic church's jubilee last year, held every 25 years, might make a suitable culmination to his papacy. Five years ago the Pope squashed speculation about whether he would step down by saying: "I leave to Christ the decision as to how and when He will release me." Next week he is due to preside over the largest consistory in history, when the 44 new cardinals named last month are formally appointed, and later in the year he will beatify the largest number of saints too, granting sanctification to victims of Spanish religious persecutions in the 1930s. This year will take him to Malta and then Syria in May, followed by a visit to Ukraine in June. He may also visit Armenia, which is celebrating its 1,700th anniversary as the first country to accept Christianity as its state religion. Only Greece seems reluctant to accept a visit. The Greek Orthodox church said he would not be welcome because of disagreements caused by the persistent Catholic attempts to make conversions there. The Orthodox archbishop Christodoulos told a local radio station recently: "If a visit takes place before these differences are resolved, it will aggravate the situation. Dialogue has been essentially at a standstill for the last decade." The Pope has already become the first head of the Catholic church to visit an Orthodox country, when he went to Romania and the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is said to be anxious to receive him, asis Beijing, perhaps after he visits Manila in March 2003. To Vatican watchers, the moment when the chamberlain discreetly approaches the unresponsive pontiff to tap him on the head with a silver hammer - the traditional way of ascertaining whether a pope is dead - seems infinitely delayed. "Visits seem to energise him," a church spokesman in London said. "It's when he is at his busiest that we are least worried about him." http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,438147,00.html *********