Pope sends support as Rainier's health worsens

Pope John Paul, himself battling fragile health, sent a message of support to Monaco's Prince Rainier yesterday but doctors said they were "extremely cautious" about the ailing monarch's chances of survival.

The 81-year-old Rainier, widower of Hollywood film star Grace Kelly, has a lung infection complicated by cardiac and kidney problems. He is in intensive care at a hospital in the Mediterranean principality his family has ruled for 700 years.

"The health of his Most Serene Highness Prince Rainier III is continuing to worsen," the palace said in a medical bulletin. "Despite the most appropriate treatment, and having controlled his bronchial-lung infection, the functioning of his heart, lungs and kidneys is progressively deteriorating." The bulletin said the doctors were "extremely cautious" about Rainier's "prospects for survival".

The 84-year-old Pope, making his own painful recovery from recent throat surgery, sent a missive to the prince on a subdued Easter weekend in the tiny French Riviera state. "Informed of the trial of ill-health that has struck His Most Serene Highness, the Holy Father joins him by sending warm wishes through thought and prayer," the Pope said.

Rainer, one of Europe's oldest and longest-serving monarchs, has been on an artificial respirator at Monaco's Cardiothoracic Centre since Wednesday. His daughters Caroline and Stephanie and his son, heir-apparent Albert, have all returned to the principality to be by their father's bedside.

Two of Caroline's children, Andre, 20, and Pierre, 17, spent more than an hour with their grandfather yesterday, along with palace chapel priest Cesar Penzo. Caroline and Albert appeared on a palace balcony to greet the crowd taking part in Monaco's Good Friday processions.

Monaco's citizens were keeping an anxious eye on the white flag flying at full-mast from the prince's palace, built on the coastal rock Rainier's ancestor François Grimaldi seized from the Genoese in 1297.

Should Rainier pass away, his son Albert, 47, is expected to take his place. Europe's last constitutional autocrat, Rainier succeeded his grandfather in 1949. He led Monaco into an age of skyscrapers, international banking and business, earning himself the nickname "the builder" in the process.

Born on May 31, 1923, the prince has cut a lonely figure in recent years as media attention shifted to the turbulent lives of his children, constantly the focus of paparazzi for magazines like Gala and Paris Match.

Princess Grace, whom Rainier married in 1956, died in a car crash in 1982.