The surgery will result in “several days” of hospitalization. Pope Francis, 86, will undergo emergency surgery under general anesthesia this Wednesday afternoon in Rome for a risk of intestinal obstruction, the Vatican announced. Wednesday morning, the Argentine pope presided as every week the general audience in St. Peter’s Square in front of thousands of faithful.
“At the end of the general audience, the Holy Father went to the A. Gemelli University Hospital where, at the beginning of the afternoon, he will undergo a surgical operation of laparotomy and plastic surgery of the wall abdominal with prostheses, under general anesthesia,” said the director of the press service of the Holy See, Matteo Bruni. Laparotomy is an operation that involves opening the abdomen.
an incisional hernia
“The operation, organized in recent days by the medical team assisting the Holy Father, became necessary due to an incisional hernia that causes recurrent, painful and worsening subocclusive syndromes,” said he added. Tuesday morning, the head of the Catholic Church had already gone to the Gemelli hospital for “examinations”, but the Vatican had not communicated on the nature of the latter.
In July 2021, the Bishop of Rome had already been hospitalized for ten days in this hospital for a left colectomy (surgery to remove a portion of the colon), scheduled for symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon. He claims to have kept “sequelae” from the anesthesia. At the end of March, François had again received antibiotic treatment for three days in the same establishment for a respiratory infection.
A waiver to come?
After his operation on Wednesday, the pope should again stay on the tenth floor of the Gemelli hospital, in the same room as that used by Pope John Paul II, operated on numerous times in this establishment. Pope Francis said two weeks ago in an interview with Spanish-language television Telemundo that this “pneumonia” had been treated “in time”. “If we had waited a few more hours, it would have been much more serious,” he said.
Jorge Bergoglio also suffers from chronic knee pain, which forces him to move around in a wheelchair or using a cane. The pope’s health appears increasingly fragile and regularly fuels speculation on the possibility of a renunciation of his office and his succession. He has repeatedly said he would consider resigning – like his predecessor Benedict XVI, who died in December – if his health were to fail, but he recently claimed that was not on the cards.