DOCTORS were rushed to the Pope’s bedside last night as his condition worsened dramatically and a senior cardinal said that he was “nearing the end”.

Rumours swept Rome that the Pope had been given the sacrament of the infirm (last rites).

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the chief Vatican spokesman, said that the Pope was suffering from a high temperature caused by a urinary tract infection that was being treated urgently with antibiotics. “The Holy Father today was struck by a high fever caused by a confirmed infection of the urinary tract,” Dr Navarro-Valls said.

“The medical situation is being strictly controlled by the Vatican medical team that is taking care of him.”

Vatican sources denied, however, that the Pope was being transferred to the Gemelli hospital in Rome, where he has already been treated twice since the beginning of February.

Early this morning the Vatican said that the Pope was responding to the antibiotics and his condition had stabilised.

Italian new agencies said that the Pope, 84, was suffering from a high temperature and substantial weight loss. The reports said that doctors had intervened because of a “worrying lowering of blood pressure”.

Overnight the lights were burning in the Pope’s rooms in the third floor of the apostolic apartment above a floodlit St Peter’s Square, which was sealed as pilgrims gathered to keep vigil. Italian television made special late-night broadcasts announcing that the Pope was “seriously ill”.

The reports came a day after the Vatican had confirmed that the Pope, who underwent throat surgery on February 24 to help him to breathe, was being fed via a nasal tube. There are persistent reports that this will be followed by a gastrostomy — the insertion of a feeding tube into his stomach — perhaps as early as this weekend.

As the latest alarm arose an Austrian news agency quoted Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, as saying that the Pope was nearing the end. It quoted the cardinal — a contender for the papacy — as saying during a visit to Jerusalem that the Pope was “approaching, as far as a person can tell, the end of his life”. He added that the Pope was “not despondent” and said that he hoped “the moment of relief comes for him”.

RAI, Italian state television, reported that the Pope had lost 19 kilos (42lbs) since his tracheotomy in February, and said that this explained the decision to insert a nasal feeding tube.

On Easter Day and Wednesday the Pope appeared at his window above St Peter’s Square but was unable to speak.

Girolamo Sirchia, the Italian Health Minister, said that “thanks to modern medicine” the Pope could continue his pontificate even though he was “gravely ill” and had “serious problems breathing and eating”.

Vittorio Messori, a Roman Catholic writer who in the past has collaborated with the Pope on his memoirs, said that the Pope had no intention of resigning, recalling that the pontiff had vowed to serve “for as long as God wills”.

In its statement on the Pope’s health on Wednesday — the first since he left hospital on March 13 after throat surgery — the Vatican said that he was “directly following” Church and Vatican affairs, celebrating Mass and spending several hours a day in his armchair rather than in his sickbed in the papal apartment, which has been fitted with state-of-the-art medical equipment.

The use of the feeding tube illustrates a key Catholic doctrine: it is morally necessary to give patients food and water, no matter their condition.

As Parkinson’s disease and other ailments have left him frail, the Pope has said that the chronically ill, “prisoners of their condition, retain their human dignity in all its fullness”.

Vatican teaching on the final stages of life includes a firm rejection of euthanasia, insistence on treatments that help people to bear ailments with dignity and encouragement of research to enhance and prolong life. The Pope defined what that meant in a speech last year: “I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act. Its use, furthermore, should be considered, in principle, ordinary and proportionate, and as such morally obligatory.”

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