VATICAN CITY – In another sign of Pope John Paul II’s growing frailty, the Vatican said yesterday that the 84-year-old pontiff was getting nutrition from a tube in his nose and acknowledged his convalescence from throat surgery last month has been “slow.”

A Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said John Paul was fitted with a nasogastric tube to “improve the calorie intake” and help him recover his strength.

The statement was issued shortly after the pope tried unsuccessfully to speak to the crowds in St. Peter’s Square for the second time in a week. After managing just a rasp, he blessed well-wishers by making the sign of the cross with his hand and withdrew.

A nasogastric tube is common in people requiring supplemental nutrition. The tube is threaded down the nose and throat into the stomach and liquid food is fed through it. While uncomfortable, no sedation or surgery is required. The patient can eat and speak with the tube in place.

The director of geriatrics at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City, Dr. Barbara Paris, said the tube might be a temporary measure to boost John Paul’s nutrition during recovery.

But she said it also could be the first step toward a more permanent feeding tube. In that procedure – known as PEG, for percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy – a surgical incision is made in the abdomen to permit a tube to be passed directly into the stomach.

The nasogastric tube is less invasive and simpler than the PEG procedure, but is not generally used for long-term supplemental feeding, Dr. Paris said.

Terri Schiavo, the severely brain damaged woman at the center of a legal battle, was fed for years by a PEG tube before it was removed this month.

It wasn’t clear when the pope’s nasogastric tube was inserted, but it was first acknowledged by the Vatican yesterday. None was visible during John Paul’s brief appearance yesterday.

Italian media have said the pope’s doctors were considering a PEG tube because John Paul was having trouble swallowing. The procedure must be done in a hospital, and Mr. Navarro-Valls’s statement appeared to indirectly deny any hospitalization was planned. Another Vatican official confirmed there was no plan to return John Paul to the hospital.

In the Vatican’s statement, the first medical report on John Paul since March 10, Mr. Navarro-Valls said the pope was continuing a “slow and progressive convalescence” from a tracheotomy February 24.

The spokesman said John Paul spends “many hours” seated in an armchair, celebrates Mass in his private chapel, and has work contacts with his aides “following directly the activities of the Holy See and the life of the church.”

But Mr. Navarro-Valls said the pontiff’s public audiences remain suspended.

He said medical assistance was being provided by the Vatican medical staff under the direction of the pope’s personal physician, Dr. Renato Buzzonetti.

The insertion of the feeding tube was the latest in a series of interventions for the pontiff, who has battled Parkinson’s disease for years as well as hip and knee ailments.

In addition to the tracheotomy, he has had an inflamed appendix and benign tumor on his colon removed, and he underwent hip replacement surgery after falling in the bathroom in 1994. He was shot in the abdomen in 1981.