Pope Francis has been admitted to Gemelli Hospital in Rome. He is going to have surgery on his abdomen.
Pope Francis will undergo emergency abdominal surgery on Wednesday afternoon, the Vatican announced. He was admitted to the Gemelli Hospital in Rome, where he is expected to remain hospitalized “a few days”. This follows a risk of bowel obstruction.
Worsening of symptoms
The surgery, made “necessary” by the aggravation of the symptoms presented by the pope according to his medical team, will take place under general anesthesia.
Pope Francis was in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday morning for his weekly general audience. “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 belly with prostheses, under general anesthesia”, indicated Matteo Bruni, director of the press service of the Holy See. Laparotomy is an operation that involves opening the abdomen.
“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.
Exams taken on Tuesday
The pope had passed several “examinations” Tuesday morning in this same hospital in Rome, but the Vatican had not communicated their nature.
“The hospitalization will last several days in order to allow a normal post-operative evolution and a complete functional recovery”, specifies the Holy See, quoted by the Italian newspaper Corriere Dela Serra .
In July 2021, he had already been hospitalized for ten days in this hospital for a major colon operation. He claims to have kept “after-effects” of the anesthesia. At the end of March, François had again been treated for three days in the same establishment for a respiratory infection.
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.
increasingly fragile health
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, whose health appears increasingly fragile, had also canceled his appointments on May 26 due to a feverish state, which however did not require hospitalization. He resumed his activities the next day.
The health of Jorge Bergoglio, elected in 2013, regularly fuels speculation about 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 table.
Despite these twists and turns, François continues to travel: he is due to go to Portugal at the beginning of August, to Mongolia at the beginning of September and to Marseilles on September 23.