The Sat Report: An Ailing Pope in need of prayers
The Holy Father is stable and at work, but a complex clinical picture requires continued hospitalisation
On Friday Pope Francis was admitted as an inpatient to the Gemelli University Hospital, to undergo treatment and tests for bronchitis. In an update in the early afternoon today, the Vatican said the Holy Father has a "polymicrobial infection" of his respiratory tract, which has required a change in his treatment. The Vatican statement concluded that "all tests carried out to date are indicative of a complex clinical picture that will require appropriate hospitalisation."
Today’s update is a worrying, and marks a change from the last time he was admitted to the Gemelli in 2023 for three nights for the same problem. We now know that he will remain hospitalised for as long as is necessary, and at least until Wednesday, because his General Audience has been cancelled. The frankness from the Holy Press Office makes a change from the way in which the health of Popes have been discussed over the years. The Pope is 88 years old and frail. We should all be praying for his health. In better news, this evening’s update indicated that the Holy Father received Holy Communion this morning, was at work, reviewing some texts and does not have a fever. I think this is a way to assuage the fears of the faithful who love him; the Pope is sick but is not moribund.
The Pope’s condition is stable and I’m confident that the will survive this illness, but nevertheless we should continue to pray for him. Gemelli is Rome’s largest hospital, and the Pope is getting world class care in a private wing of the hospital, state of the art medical facilities and a five-star hotel in terms of lodgings. The Pope still has many plans for the rest of the year, a visit to Turkey for the one, and a desire to reach a unified date for Easter. Time will tell if he will be fit enough to do all of this.
Less than a week a ago the Holy Father wrote to the bishops of the United States of America encouraging them in their work to defend the human dignity of migrants, where he issued a thinly veiled rebuke of the Catholic sitting Vice-President, acknowledged the right of the state to deport serious and violent criminal illegal aliens but at the same time stating that a “rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”
This important letter barely survived a news cycle. Trump has decided to open talks with Putin to try to end this war in Ukraine, leaving the Ukrainians out in the cold, and taking the leaders of Europe by surprise. The prophetic voice of Pope Francis through all this is being very sadly missed.
The truth be told the Holy Father hasn’t been well for a very long time. I was watching video from the last time he celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, almost more than 3 and half years ago; he has deteriorated significantly. He was hospitalised for 11 days to undergo elective bowel surgery in 2021, and, I as mentioned previously, was hospitalised in 2023 for bronchitis.
Suffering from bronchitis, recently the Holy Father has become increasingly breathless when delivering addresses or sermons, needing to cut them short. In the days leading up to his hospilisation, he moved all of his audiences to his residence of Casa Santa Marta, instead of the Apostolic Palace. This is all on the background of suffering recurrent falls in recent months.
I was in Rome for the Jubilee of Communications three weeks ago, the Holy Father spoke for exactly three minutes, joking that at “this time, with the stomach rumbling, reading these 9 pages would be torture.” It was when he needed his left hand to hold his right arm in order to impart his Apostolic Blessing, at that I realised that we as Catholics need to pray for his good health. This is what we should all do.