Vatican City ? Aides wheel him around on a chariot-like cart during ceremonies at the Vatican. They attach a ledger to the arms of his chair to hold the papers of his speeches. They hold him tightly fearing a fall.

Pope John Paul II turns 82 on Saturday, a stooped figure burdened by several health problems and the backlash from the sex abuse scandal rocking his church in the 24th year of his papacy, the longest pontificate since the 1800s.

Pope John Paul II is helped by a security guard, left, and his aide Bishop Stanislaw Dziwisz during a visit to the Italian island of Ischia, off the coast of Naples. The pope, who turns 82 Saturday, makes few moves unaided.

Despite the physical strain, he has no intention of easing up, especially in his role as the globe-trotting pope the “apostle on the move,” as Vatican media call him.

“I count on your spiritual support to continue faithfully in the ministry that the Lord entrusted to me,” John Paul said Wednesday, responding to birthday greetings from the crowd during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

Weakened by symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and knee and hip problems, John Paul now distributes communion while seated and needs the help of aides to climb even a few stairs.

The Vatican apparently rejecting the idea that the pope should use a wheelchair has been improvising, using a chariot-like cart during public ceremonies.

After arriving May 5 on the Italian island of Ischia, he seemed so drained of energy that he only limply raised a hand to wave to well-wishers lining his route.

But by the end of the day he perked up when young islanders presented him with a 3-foot-long birthday cake. “For this you need a very youthful appetite!” he quipped.

John Paul is planning three more trips abroad in the coming months, signs he still has the strength needed to carry on as leader of the world’s 1 billion Roman Catholics. Top officials reject any suggestion that he is no longer in control and should resign.

Some in his church differ.

“He is an old 82,” said the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a liberal theologian at the University of Notre Dame in the United States. He said John Paul had been inattentive as reports of sex abuse spread through the church.

So far, three bishops have been forced to resign this year in the United States, Ireland and Poland and Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law has faced calls that he step down, too. All were appointed by John Paul.

After meeting with the pope during an extraordinary summit of American cardinals at the Vatican last month, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington said the pope was deeply saddened by the scandal. “It broke his heart,” McCarrick said.

Until now, pressure for the pope to resign was seen coming from liberal Catholics maintaining the hope that a successor might relax church bans on contraception, abortion and the ordination of women and lift the celibacy requirement for priests.

But Italian religion specialist Vittorio Messori, who collaborated with John Paul on his book “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” said the idea of a resignation was now coming from some conservative cardinals.

They are upset by a series of initiatives the pope undertook for the new millennium, including issuing apologies for the sins of Catholics through the centuries, Messori wrote recently in the newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Church law allows popes to resign. There is no provision for removing an incapacitated pope, but there is precedent.

Pope Celestine V abdicated in 1294. He spent the last two years of his life in confinement because his successor feared he could become the rallying point for a schism.