With Pope Francis out of the hospital, John Paul II’s final years come to mind

“How did he look?” That was the question people would ask, for years, every time I attended a papal event. The pope in those days was John Paul II, who had the looks of a leading man and the gait of a star athlete when he was elected and kept them both for well over a decade.

John Paul II had an appendectomy in October of 1996 (a little less than a year before I moved to Rome), but would not be hospitalized again until February of 2005, even though he was less and less himself.

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