Pope Francis’ long medical history: lungs have been causing problems for a long time

Pope Francis (88) is in the hospital and the concern for the head of the church grows, also because the lungs of the 88-year-old is affected again. Francis has a “bilateral pneumonia”. Both lungs are therefore affected. The clinical picture is “complex”, also became known. Most recently, the Pontifex, which is located in the Gemelli Clinic in Rome, had “a quiet night”.

Franziskus, meanwhile after Leo XIII. (1810-1903) The second oldest Pope in history has been suffering from a respiratory infection for more than a week. The Argentinian was therefore taken to the hospital last Friday. The Pope is said to be particularly susceptible to lung infections after he had a rib fur infection as a young adult.

In his autobiography “Hope”, which appeared in January 2025, Francis reported on his health problems. In the book of Influenza epidemic in August 1957, he said: “It caught us all. But while my comrades recovered after four or five days, I was getting worse.” He was brought to a hospital in Buenos Aires as an emergency. There you first and a half liter of liquid from the Pleura, the breast fur. “I hovered between life and death,” he writes about his condition at the time.

Later, the doctors told him that he had three great cysts on the lungs “which would have to be removed surgery as soon as possible”. The upper part of the right lung wing was then taken from him. The later Pope was 21 years old at the time.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as Pope Francis, has been head of the Catholic Church for twelve years. During this time he was hospitalized several times, including in March 2023 when he spent three nights with bronchitis in a clinic.

The Pope has also caused further problems in recent years. After two abdominal operations in 2021 and 2023, he is doing well now, he reports in “Hope”. “I can eat everything, and the simplest explanation for all of this is that I get old.” According to Francis, what was more about him is the “physical humiliation of the knee pain”. At first it made him embarrassed to be dependent on the wheelchair, “but age brings a lot with it”, and you have to take it as it comes […]. The Pope gets physiotherapy twice a week, as he continues. “I’m going on the stick. I take as many steps as I can, and that’s how it works.”

Even after his operations, he did not think about giving up, said the Pope in his autobiography. “Of course, this option always exists. Shortly after the election, I entrusted a letter to the cardinal treasurer in which I declare my resignation in the event that there are medical reasons for this.” If this should happen, he stays in Rome, as an emeritus bishop, according to the Pope.