THE Vatican has given an upbeat account of the condition of the Pope, who underwent throat surgery on Thursday night. But it admitted that he would be unable to speak for several days and was communicating with aides in writing.

As prayers for the Pope were said around the world, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican spokesman, said he could assure the anxious faithful and well-wishers that the Pope had spent a restful night at the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome after a tracheotomy to ease a breathing crisis brought on by flu — the second such alarm in a month.

In his briefing, Dr Navarro-Valls said that the Pope was breathing on his own and was not suffering from pneumonia, a common cause of death in elderly Parkinson’s disease sufferers.

He disclosed that after the half-hour operation, the Pope had asked for pen and paper and jotted down a note which read: “What did they do to me?” The spokesman said the pontiff had meant this in a “light-hearted way” and had added, still in writing, “I am always totus tuus,” a Latin expression of devotion to the Virgin Mary meaning, “I am totally yours ” or — in the spokesman’s own translation — “I am completely in your hands.”

When the Pope was rushed to the Gemelli hospital the first time just over three weeks ago, Vatican legal experts countered suggestions that he might abdicate by stating that he would remain head of the world’s one billion Catholics for as long as he could communicate his will, if necessary in writing.

The next Pope is widely expected to approve proposals for a commission to examine whether Church rules should be changed to set limits to papal terms of office. Dr Navarro-Valls said that on the advice of his doctors, the Pope would not speak for several days “so as to favour the recovery of the functions of the larynx”. In its first medical bulletin since the Pope was taken to hospital on Thursday morning, the Vatican said that he showed no signs of either fever or any lung or bronchial infection.

The tracheotomy, which involved cutting a small breathing hole in the Pope’s throat, had not been an emergency procedure. “It was a question of assuring adequate breathing of the patient,” Dr Navarro-Valls said.

In the Pope’s absence the Vatican is once again being run by his deputy, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State (prime minister) together with other senior prelates such as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They are not empowered, however, to make appointments or issue doctrinal statements.

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