Two senior Vatican officials in charge while pope in hospital

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Two men hold the keys to the Roman Catholic Church while an incapacitated Pope John Paul II remains in hospital—the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano and the pope’s private secretary Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz.

Born into a well-to-do family in Italy’s northwest town of Isola d’Asti, the 77-year-old Sodano is the Roman Catholic Church’s number two and as such is in charge of running the church’s day-to-day affairs.

Sodano studied theology at the seminary in Asti and in 1959 joined the Holy See’s diplomatic corps, serving in Ecuador, Uruguay and Chile before being called back to Rome in 1968 to serve in the church’s then council for public affairs.

He returned to work in Chile for another 10 years until 1988 when John Paul II called him to serve as the Vatican’s “foreign affairs” minister and then as secretary of state.

Sodano accompanied the pope during all of his recent travels and since Pope John Paul II’s health deteriorated has replaced him at mass or during important ceremonies as well as in running the church’s daily affairs.

Dziwisz, who turns 66 in April, for his part is considered a sort of “deputy pope” in light of his role as the pontiff’s long-term personal secretary and his close ties with a man he has stood beside since the 1960s.

Born in Poland, Dziwisz has devoted much of his career to Pope John Paul II, a fellow Pole. Very little is known about his life and legend has it that he met the future pope, Karol Josef Wojtyla, on the ski slopes of Zakopane in Poland.

Monsignor Dziwisz, who has been at the pope’s bedside since he was hospitalized late Tuesday from complications related to the flu, rarely speaks to the media. But he was unusually forthcoming in a speech on May 13, 2001, when the Catholic University of Lublin gave him an honorary degree in theology, mentioning how that date held special meaning to him as it was on May 13, 1981 that the pope was shot while Dziwisz stood next to him in St. Peter’s Square.

More recently, Dziwisz stepped in to make clear the church’s stand on Mel Gibson’s controversial Biblical epic “The Passion of the Christ,” saying that the pontiff had never endorsed the film.

Dziwisz in his job as personal secretary to Pope John Paul II is assisted by Monsignor Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki, 38, who since Tuesday has been relaying him at the pope’s bedside. 

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