no, not quite. heres the story so far.
source
Pope's Health Has Deteriorated Further: Vatican
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope John Paul's health worsened further on Friday when his breathing became shallow and his blood pressure deteriorated, said the Vatican, and one Italian news agency reported he had lost consciousness.
Church officials tried to prepare the world and its 1.1 billion Roman Catholics for the end of one of the longest papal reigns in history after the Vatican said the long-ailing Pope had declined further hospital treatment.
"The general conditions and cardio-respiratory conditions of the Holy Father have further worsened," said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls.
"A gradual worsening of arterial hypotension has been noted, and breathing has become shallow. The clinical picture indicates cardio-circulatory and renal insufficiency. The biological parameters are notably compromised."
Sky Italia TV, quoting a report from Italy's Aplomb news agency, said the Pope had lost consciousness but there was no independent confirmation. "There's no hope any more," the ANSA news agency quoted an unidentified medical source as saying.
The 84-year-old Pope received the blessing for the dying after his health suddenly deteriorated overnight, drawing anguished prayers from Catholics around the globe reluctant to accept his end may be near.
"The Holy Father -- with visible participation -- is joining in the continual prayers of those assisting him," said Navarro-Valls.
Catholics flocked to churches to light candles and pray for the man who became Pope in 1978 and revitalised the papacy. Groups of faithful gathered in the Vatican's vast St. Peter's Square, some gazing up at the papal apartments.
CARDINALS SUMMONED
Cardinals were summoned to the Polish-born Pope's bedside to say their farewells in person.
Rome Cardinal Camilla Ruin told a mass at the city's San Giovanni church that the Pope "already sees and touches the Lord. He is already united with our sole Savior."
Navarro-Valls earlier on Friday fought back tears when he told reporters the Pontiff had celebrated Mass from his bed as dawn broke.
After weeks of worsening health, the Pope developed a high fever on Thursday caused by a urinary infection.
Poles clung to the hope their beloved countryman and moral authority would step back from the brink of death.
"I came to pray for the Pope," said Maria Danecka, one of hundreds who crowded in and around the basilica in Wadowice, a southern city where Karol Wojtyla was born in 1920, many weeping.
"If he were to leave us, we won't have anybody to show us the way, to help us understand the world."
Churches in the capital Warsaw and the southern city of Krakow where Wojtyla was archbishop filled with worshippers.
The Pope told aides he did not want to return to hospital, where he spent several weeks before Easter after breathing trouble.
POPE "SERENE"
"The fact he has not gone back (shows) he is serenely carrying the cross and ready to give up and to say 'It is finished'," said his former private secretary, Irish bishop John Magee.
Recent images of a gaunt, pained John Paul, his body ravaged by Parkinson's disease and arthritis, contrast starkly to the sprightly Wojtyla who strode onto the world stage on Oct. 16, 1978, and traveled the globe tirelessly to preach the Gospels.
He has been leading the world's largest church for 26 years -- longer than all but two earlier popes.
The Pope came close to death before when a Turkish gunman shot him during a general audience in St. Peter's Square in 1981. He believes divine intervention saved him from death.
After a pope dies, cardinals from around the world are called to Rome to chose a successor at a conclave which starts in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel 15 to 20 days after the death.
There is no favorite candidate to take over as head of the Church, and Wojtyla himself was seen as an outsider before he was elected.
Some churchmen believe the developing world should provide the next pope as that is where the religion is most vibrant.
Catholics across Africa, the Church's fastest-growing region, drew strength from the Pope's endurance amid their own struggle for survival on the world's poorest continent.
"It is very difficult for him as a leader to go through this. Yet he has not given up and this gives us courage to bear our own burdens," said Eleanora Kazadi, 40, a bookseller at a packed Mass in Kenya's capital Nairobi.
"We are all very sad about his failing health," said President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the Philippines, where four out of five people are Catholics.
SOMBRE ITALY
Underscoring the somber mood, Italian political parties halted campaigning for regional elections this weekend and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi canceled all appointments.
The Pope has grown steadily weaker over the past decade. He has been seriously ill for most of the past two months and failed to recover from recent throat surgery aimed at helping him breathe.
He has been unable to speak in public since he left hospital on March 13, with a tube to help him breathe in his windpipe.
Historians say one of his legacies will remain his role in the fall of communism in Europe in 1989.
His orthodox line on many Church teachings has won favor among poor-country Catholics but criticism from liberal believers in developed countries for his proclamations against contraception, abortion, married priests and women clergy.
