He's Pope John Paul II's faithful servant, his confidant, his gatekeeper.
There's probably no one as sensitive about the Pope's image and health problems - or to suggestions that he might resign - as Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul's longtime personal secretary.
Dziwisz rode in the ambulance when the pontiff was wounded by a Turkish gunman in 1981 and again last week when he was rushed to the hospital with breathing problems.
Since then, he has not been seen leaving the pope's 10th floor suite at the Gemelli Polyclinic, where he has been screening the few visitors allowed to see John Paul.
"Even the most powerful cardinals at the Vatican entrust themselves to him," Venerdi magazine said in a profile last week.
The 65-year-old Dziwisz has spent much of his clerical life working for John Paul, first in the archdiocese of Krakow, Poland, and then at the Vatican. He jealously guards the pope's privacy, as well as the image of a pope able to continue in his mission despite Parkinson's disease and crippling hip and knee ailments.
"Many journalists who in the past have written about the pope's health are already in heaven," Dziwisz said pointedly two years ago amid rumors about John Paul's weakened condition.
But he didn't spare even such a powerful figure as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who had been quoted in a German magazine as saying the pope "was in a bad way" and that the faithful should pray for him.
"Cardinal Ratzinger was crying yesterday, explaining that he never gave an interview," Dziwisz said.
Now, with the pope in the hospital, and missing public prayers on Ash Wednesday for the first time, there is new talk about whether he would ever consider stepping down.
"Let's leave that hypothesis up to the pope's conscience," said the Holy See's No. 2, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, in answer to a reporter's query Monday.
Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mejia, a retired Vatican official speaking with Argentina's Radio La Plata, described a papal resignation as "possible."
"We hope the pope can keep working," Mejia said. "But if he can't, it is up to his conscience to decide whether he should step down. It's a decision that depends exclusively on him."
"We hope he recovers and can go forward, but if he can't, he can't," he said. "Now he has to determine if he has reached his limit. It's something only he can judge before God."
Dziwisz - pronounced "gee-vish" - is known at the Vatican simply as Don Stanislaw.
During John Paul's public audiences, a simple nod from Don Stanislaw is enough to break the security barrier around the pope so a baby can be brought up to be kissed, a politician for a word in the pope's ear.
Eyebrows were raised during the pope's 1981 hospitalization when Polish tennis player Wojtek Fibak was brought to the suite while the president of Italy cooled his heels in the lobby.
Dziwisz found himself in the public spotlight last year when controversy arose over whether the pope had actually endorsed Mel Gibson's epic film "The Passion of the Christ." He issued a public denial that the pope had given his approval by saying: "It is as it was."
He is clearly protective. When John Paul visited a steaming hospital in Santo Domingo, Dziwisz made sure reporters were along and said out loud repeatedly: "And they say he's so sick."
As a reward for faithful service, John Paul promoted Dziwisz to archbishop, along with two other staff members, in 1998.
By tradition, papal secretaries fade from the scene when the papacy is over, but rumor has it that Dziwisz is in line to return to Poland to take over as archbishop of Krakow when the present archbishop retires. Some have even said John Paul has secretly named him a cardinal.
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