{"id":1479,"date":"2009-06-15T17:52:37","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T17:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov.php"},"modified":"2009-06-15T17:52:37","modified_gmt":"2009-06-15T17:52:37","slug":"doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Who Served Popes for Over 30 years, Retires"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) &#8211; June 15, 2009<br \/>\nVatican City (dpa) &#8211; The Vatican announced Monday the retirement of long-time papal personal physician, Renato Buzzonetti, who assisted Pope John Paul II following the failed 1981 assassination attempt and at his deathbed in 2005, before going on to serve the current pontiff, Benedict XVI.<br \/>\nThe 84-year-old Buzzonetti, who Benedict has named to the honorary position of Pontifical Physician Emeritus, has been replaced by another Italian, Patrizio Polisca a trained heart surgeon.<br \/>\nThe 55-year-old Polisca has accompanied Benedict during recent papal trips abroad, a task that for many years fell to Buzzonetti, a veteran of travels with the globe-trotting John Paul.<br \/>\nIn his 2006 book Let Me Go: The Strength in Weakness of John Paul II, Buzzonetti revealed how the Polish pontiff was first diagnosed with symptoms of Parkinson&#8217;s disease in 1991.<br \/>\nThe fact was kept hidden by the Vatican, which only acknowledged the nature of the pontiff&#8217;s illness in 2003.<br \/>\nIn the book, whose title is taken from John Paul&#8217;s last words: &#8220;Let me go to the house of the father,&#8221; Buzzonetti also gave a detailed account of the Polish pontiff&#8217;s final hours.<br \/>\nHe denied claims by Italian pro-euthanasia activists and others that John Paul&#8217;s final words amounted to a request to have his medical treatment suspended so as to let him die &#8211; actions that run counter to Catholic teaching.<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) &#8211; June 15, 2009 Vatican City (dpa) &#8211; The Vatican announced Monday the retirement of long-time papal personal physician, Renato Buzzonetti, who assisted Pope John Paul II following the failed 1981 assassination attempt and at his deathbed in 2005, before going on to serve the current pontiff, Benedict XVI. The 84-year-old Buzzonetti,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Doctor Who Served Popes for Over 30 years, Retires<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Doctor Who Served Popes for Over 30 years, Retires\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) &#8211; June 15, 2009 Vatican City (dpa) &#8211; The Vatican announced Monday the retirement of long-time papal personal physician, Renato Buzzonetti, who assisted Pope John Paul II following the failed 1981 assassination attempt and at his deathbed in 2005, before going on to serve the current pontiff, Benedict XVI. The 84-year-old Buzzonetti,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-15T17:52:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Doctor Who Served Popes for Over 30 years, Retires","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Doctor Who Served Popes for Over 30 years, Retires","og_description":"Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) &#8211; June 15, 2009 Vatican City (dpa) &#8211; The Vatican announced Monday the retirement of long-time papal personal physician, Renato Buzzonetti, who assisted Pope John Paul II following the failed 1981 assassination attempt and at his deathbed in 2005, before going on to serve the current pontiff, Benedict XVI. The 84-year-old Buzzonetti,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-06-15T17:52:37+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov","name":"Doctor Who Served Popes for Over 30 years, Retires","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-06-15T17:52:37+00:00","dateModified":"2009-06-15T17:52:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/06\/doctor-who-served-popes-for-ov#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Doctor Who Served Popes for Over 30 years, Retires"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}