Your conjectures are right. In one of the OR articles on the Viterbo visit, published in the 9/7-9/8 issue, translated in
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8527...
a full explanationw as given, as ff:
In place of the Pope, Cardinal Vallini distributed Communion. because, the Pope's personal physicain, Dr. Patrizio Polisca explained, the Pope wrist is still healing, and it was not advisable for him at this point to perform the repeated motion of drawing the host from the ciborium and placing it on the tongue of the communicant.
Polisca added that rehabilitation therapy to recocver full functionality of the wrist has begun but will take a few weeks.
"The act of taking the consecrated host from the ciborium and offering it to the communicant is a gesture that requires full functionality to make sure the Host does not fall," he also explained.
From the Mass today:
BENEDICTUS QUI VENIT IN NOMINE DOMINI!
You may want to read the translation of the Holy Father's homily today.
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8527207&p=29&#idm...
As usual, when he speaks to priests about priests, one hears someone speaking out of profound personal experience of an intimate fuilfilled relationship with Jesus Christ, and so I always find these homilies (or discourses) very moving, because it is perhaps the closest we can get to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI inmost core.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/09/2009 19:03]