Pope Francis canceled his trip to Dubai to participate in the UN climate summit (COP28), due to medical orders, despite recovering from the flu and lung inflammation that affected him, the Vatican reported this Tuesday.
The pope, who will turn 87 next month, was scheduled to leave Rome this Rome to speak at the COP28 meeting on Saturday morning.
He was also scheduled to inaugurate a religious pavilion on Sunday, on the sidelines of the conference, before returning to the Vatican, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The pope revealed on Sunday that he had lung inflammation, but said at the time that he still planned to go to Dubai, where he would become the first pontiff to speak at a U.N. climate conference.
Concern for the environment has been a priority for Francis and he has been praised for his moral leadership on this issue.
Until Tuesday’s announcement, all information from the Vatican indicated that the trip would continue and the spokesperson held his traditional pre-trip briefing at the beginning of the day, answering questions about the bilateral meetings planned by Francis on the sidelines of the Dubai conference.
This is the second time that the Pope’s fragile health has forced him to cancel a trip abroad, after having postponed a planned trip to Congo and South Sudan in 2022, due to knee inflammation, although he was able to make that trip in early this year.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni stressed that Francis is improving from the flu and respiratory inflammation that forced him to cancel his audiences on Saturday.
But “the doctors asked the Pope not to undertake the trip planned for the next few days to Dubai.”
“Pope Francis accepted the doctors’ request with great regret and, therefore, the trip was cancelled,” he added.
The Pope has had several health problems in recent years and months.
Most recently, he was “a little constipated” earlier this month, but continued with all his commitments as planned.
Francis’ health has been a topic of debate since he made it clear that he would be willing to resign if illness prevented him from doing his job, as his predecessor Benedict XVI surprisingly did in February 2013.
The United Nations has been insisting on the need to immediately adopt “spectacular measures” to avoid further global warming, when the planet is heading towards 2.9ºC of warming.
To avoid a 3°C rise in temperatures by the end of the century, all countries will have to reduce emissions well beyond current pledges, cutting 42% of emissions by 2030 if they do not want to exceed 1.5° C, a goal assumed in 2015 in the Paris Agreement on emissions reduction, indicates a UN report.
COP28 is held between November 30 and December 12 in Dubai, with the ambition of carrying out the first global evaluation of the Paris Agreement.
Source: TSF
