Pope Francis has a respiratory infection and must spend “a few days” hospitalized, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement on Wednesday.
“He has,” he said, “a respiratory infection (which excludes contagion by Covid-19) that will require a few days of hospital medical therapy.” And he added that Francis “is moved by the many messages received and expresses his gratitude for the closeness and prayer.”
At the beginning it had been reported that he was going to enter to undergo medical “controls”. “The Holy Father is in [el hospital] Gemelli from this afternoon for previously scheduled checks,” Bruni himself said in a statement.
Sources from the medical center told the Italian press that Francisco arrived by ambulance after presenting heart or respiratory problems.
Francis, who celebrated ten years of papacy last March, participated in the morning general audience in St. Peter’s Square and was smiling as he greeted the faithful from his popemobile.
The Pope has been using a wheelchair since May 2022 due to arthritis in his right knee. In July 2021, he spent ten days at the Gemelli hospital for a colon operation.
That operation, he once said, left him “aftermath”, so he decided to rule out knee surgery against the advice of his doctors.
The Gemelli Hospital is the medical center where Pope John Paul II was hospitalized on several occasions.
