The hearings that Pope Francis was due to hold this Thursday were canceled following the pope’s hospitalization in Rome, a Vatican source announced this Wednesday, saying it was “possible” the pope spent the night in the hospital ward.
“The pope’s schedule has been suspended for the possibility of further investigations,” the same source told AFP, after the 86-year-old pope was hospitalized for what the Vatican spokesman described as “previously scheduled investigations”.
however, the Corriere della Serra it is alleged that the pope arrived at the hospital by ambulance at the end of the morning with heart and breathing problems, after being taken to the cardiology department. However, a hospital source says the situation is considered “not worrisome”.
It should be noted that Francisco, when he was 21 years old, had to remove part of a lung due to severe pneumonia and three cysts in the lung, which was never a limitation for Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Francis, who celebrated 10 years as pope this month, attended the general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday morning, where he smiled and greeted the faithful in his “Popemobile”. However, according to AFP photographers, the pope moved with difficulty and appeared to be in severe pain.
The pope, who has been using a wheelchair since May last year due to severe pain in his right knee, spent 10 days in July 2021 at Gemelli Hospital, the same one where he is now hospitalized, for delicate surgery on his colon.
The pope later explained that he had “aftermath” from this operation, ruling out knee surgery.
Francisco also suffers from chronic hip pain that left him with a limp, forcing him to give up official ceremonies on some occasions.
Gemelli Hospital is the medical center where Pope John Paul II was also hospitalized several times in 1992 and underwent surgery to remove a benign tumor in his colon.
The Pope’s health, mainly due to Francis’s age and his walking difficulties, usually sparks all sorts of speculation.
In the various interviews given in recent months, the Latin American pope has raised the possibility of resigning, as has his predecessor in 2013, Benedict XVI, who died late last year.
In July last year, Francisco confessed that he “couldn’t travel again” at the same pace as before and even said he might have to leave. In February, he clarified that a pope’s resignation “shouldn’t become fashionable” and that this idea “wasn’t on his agenda.”
For a year Francisco has had a “personal health assistant”, a nurse, who is with him permanently.
The health of popes has always been a “reserved matter” for the Vatican and is generally kept secret.
Argentine physician and journalist Nelson Castro recently presented a book in Rome about the health of Popes and the diseases they have suffered since Leo XIII and spoke on this subject in particular with Francis, who told the journalist that he was “fully recovered” , who no longer felt restricted, that when he lived in Argentina he treated back pain with Chinese acupuncture and that he had a “temporary” heart problem due to a mild narrowing of an artery in 2004.
Source: DN
