Pope wheeled up St Peter’s aisle

POPE Benedict XVI began using a wheeled platform yesterday to navigate the long aisle of St Peter’s Basilica, adopting the device employed by his predecessor, John Paul II, to reduce fatigue.

As the platform, pushed forward by aides, moved towards the main altar, the pope gripped his pastoral staff with one hand and the device’s support bar with the other.

The 84-year-old pontiff occasionally took his hand off the bar to wave to thousands of faithful flanking his route in the basilica, where he celebrated a mass dedicated to encouraging missionary zeal.

Pope Benedict walked steadily around the central altar but appeared less sprightly yesterday than he usually does. However, Vatican spokesman the Reverend Federico Lombardi insisted the platform wasn’t being used for any “medical reason”.

“The sole purpose is to ease the effort of the holy father, to reduce the fatigue,” he said.

No longer walking down the basilica aisle when Benedict arrives and leaves for ceremonies also makes the pontiff “more protected, because the pope stays, in his path, in the centre” of the aisle, Fr Lombardi said.

During the solemn entrance procession in the basilica for Christmas Eve Mass in 2009, a woman with psychiatric problems scrambled over the barrier and in her eagerness to greet the pope, knocked him down. Benedict was unhurt, but an elderly cardinal was injured.