PLOVDIV, Bulgaria — With Pope John Paul II increasingly frail, the Vatican suggested for the first time Sunday that it may have to cut back on the 82-year-old pontiff's future trips, indicating that planned visits to Mexico and Guatemala in July could be dropped.
John Paul will go to Toronto to mark the Roman Catholic Church's World Youth Day, papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said, but he suggested the Vatican was carefully evaluating whether the ailing pope could handle the other stops on the proposed 11-day trip.
"Toronto is clear. For the others, we shall see," Navarro-Valls told reporters. "No decision has been made yet. Everything that has been confirmed is confirmed."
But he added: "Something that has been confirmed can be unconfirmed."
Throughout his 24-year papacy, the only trips postponed because of John Paul's ill health were a 1994 visit to New York after the pontiff broke his leg and a trip to Armenia in 1999 after he came down with the flu.
According to the Vatican, John Paul has visited more than 140 countries on 96 different trips, traveled nearly three times the distance between the Earth and the moon and has spent about 10 percent of his time outside of the Vatican.
Despite persistent questions about the pope's ailing health and flagging strength, the Vatican had insisted as recently as Saturday that no changes would be made to his travel schedule. Underscoring how sensitive the issue is, Navarro-Valls issued a statement later Sunday stressing that no decision on the Mexico and Guatemala legs had been made.
Winding up a taxing four-day Bulgaria trip Sunday with an outdoor Mass in the southern city of Plovdiv, the pope sat slumped in a white chair on the altar, looking feeble. His hands trembled and his voice was heavily slurred, symptoms of Parkinson's disease.
Although he has difficulty walking and has been wheeled around on a special platform, Navarro-Valls denied there were any plans to use a wheelchair on future trips.