Vatican City – Pope Francis will be hospitalized for “several days” at the Gemelli hospital in Rome, due to a “respiratory infection,” the Vatican said yesterday in a statement.
The medical controls that were carried out “revealed a respiratory infection (excluding covid 19), which will require several days of adequate hospital medical treatment,” spokesman Matteo Bruni said in the note.
Curiously, hours before, Bruni himself had attributed the hospitalization and the suspension of the hearings scheduled for today and tomorrow to “scheduled controls”, which ultimately turned out to be false.
According to witnesses, shortly before his transfer to the clinic at 3:45 p.m. local time (10:45 a.m. in Argentina), the 86-year-old pontiff had left signs of pain during a meeting with the faithful in St. Peter’s Square.
“The Holy Father has been at the Gemelli since this afternoon for some scheduled checks,” Matteo Bruni had said in his first statement.
At noon, after the general audience that he had led in the morning in Saint Peter’s Square, the pontiff had to suspend an interview with an Italian television program in the Regina Coeli Roman prison.
According to witnesses, he moved with difficulty and seemed to be in severe pain. In 2021, Jorge Bergoglio underwent surgery at the Gemelli for a “symptomatic diverticular stenosis” (diverticulitis) of the colon, for which he spent ten days outside the Vatican until he was discharged.
In the operation, 33 centimeters of intestine were removed and he made a full recovery, although in an interview at the end of January he stated that the diverticulitis “had returned”, without further details.
Last year, meanwhile, the Pope had to suspend a trip to Africa and start using a wheelchair for long journeys due to a small fracture in his right knee. After canceling several audiences and meetings, the Pope is still recovering from that injury and uses a cane to get around. Consulted by the press, he even added that he rejects the idea of a leg operation to avoid the long consequences that the anesthesia of the 2021 intervention left him.
The world already knew of his various health problems due to the fact that he suffered from chronic sciatica that forced him to limp, for which reason he had to forego official ceremonies on some occasions.
The Gemelli Hospital is the medical center where Pope John Paul II was also hospitalized on several occasions and even had a benign colon tumor removed in 1992. The Pope’s health, especially due to Francis’ age and his problems walking , usually unleash all kinds of conjectures.
Source: Ambito
