Pope John Paul marked the 26th anniversary of his pontificate on Saturday, defying medical odds and confounding predictions about any successor. Debilitated by Parkinson’s disease unable to walk, sometimes unable to speak clearly, the 84-year-old pontiff has defied premature predictions of his imminent demise for at least 10 years.

On Saturday afternoon he was due to celebrate a mass at the same time he was elected on October 16, 1978 as history’s first Polish Pope and the first non-Italian pontiff in 455 years. He is already the third-longest serving pope in history. Only St Peter and Pius IX served longer, both reigning for more than 30 years in the 1st and 19th centuries, respectively. A close aide of the Pope recently said that a number of journalists and critics who wrongly predicted his death over the past decade “are already in heaven.” But is the Pope himself running the shop back here on earth?

Aides say yes. Critics say no. “He is still in charge, signing off on documents and the naming of bishops”, said an aide, who asked not to be identified. On Friday, he received three bishops, one cardinal, a group of pilgrims and attended an anniversary concert in his honor by the chorus and band of Russia's Red Army -- something that would have been unthinkable just 15 years ago.

Critics say he is not in charge, or at least, not as much as he should be. “The Church is going through what can be called a case of the blues, the blues of the end of a reign which seems to be never-ending, marked by the Pope's enormous physical frailty”, wrote the French left-wing Catholic weekly Témoignage Chrétien.

In his new book, “The Pontiff in Winter”, British writer John Cornwell says the Pope is often distant in private meetings and suggests that the Vatican is being run by papal aides. “For six years or so, gradually and without public awareness, John Paul had been leaving more and more of the running of the Church to others”, Cornwell writes. But what Cornwell calls the Pope's “dogged hold on power” for his refusal to step down is held up as heroic Christian witness by his supporters. John Paul has left a conservative stamp on his Church of a billion souls, naming nearly all of the cardinals who will choose his successor in a secret conclave after his death. But front-runners in the succession list appear and fade like the morning fog over St.-Peter's Square in winter.

One of the possible successors is 71-year-old Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, who would become the first African Pope in some 1 500 years. He has worked in the Vatican for 20 years, many of them as the Pope's point man for relations with Islam.

<B>Philip Pullella</B>