The pope, hospitalized, cancels the hearings on Thursday.
Pope Francis, 86, was admitted to a hospital in Rome this Wednesday to undergo medical “controls” and suspended his audiences on Thursday, Vatican sources reported, unleashing questions about the state of health of the Argentine pontiff.
Source: AFP
“The Holy Father is in [el hospital] Gemelli from this afternoon for previously scheduled checks”said in a statement the director of the press office of the Holy See, Matteo Bruni.
The report does not give any precision about the possible duration of the hospitalization, nor of the tests to which he is being submitted.
A Vatican source told AFP that Thursday’s hearings were cancelled.
“The pope’s schedule has been suspended in case he has to carry out more tests,” the source said, estimating “possible” that the pope may have to spend the night in hospital.
Sources from the Roman medical center told the local press that Francisco arrived by ambulance after presenting heart or respiratory problemsso it would be in the cardiology department.
The information has not been confirmed by the Vatican, which usually gives few details regarding the health of the popes.
Francisco had to cancel an interview he had for an Italian television special about Easter, so his admission to the hospital turns out to be unscheduled, contrary to what was announced by the papal spokesman, which feeds all kinds of rumors.
Francis, who in March celebrated ten years of papacy, He participated in the morning general audience in Saint Peter’s Square and was seen smiling when he greeted the faithful from his “popemobile”.
However, according to AFP photographers, he was moving with difficulty and appeared to be in severe pain.
Francisco, who has been using a wheelchair since May 2022 due to arthritis in his right knee, spent ten days at the Gemelli hospital in July 2021 for a delicate colon operation.
He then explained that that operation left him “aftermath”, so he decided to rule out knee surgery, as advised by his doctors.
The world already knew about his ailments because 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 where a benign colon tumor was removed in 1992.
– GUESSES AND SECRETS –
In the various interviews granted in recent months, he evoked the chance to resign just as his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who died at the end of 2022, did in 2013.
Last July, Francisco confessed that “He could no longer travel” at the same pace as before and even mentioned that he could “step aside”.
But in February he clarified that the resignation of a pope “should not become a fad” and that this idea “for the moment” was not on his agenda.
Francisco has had a permanent “personal health assistant” for a year, a nurse.
The health of potatoes has always been “reserved matter” for the Vatican and generally kept secret.
The Argentine doctor and journalist Nelson Castro recently presented a book on the health of the popes in Rome and reviewed the diseases suffered by them since Leo XIII (1878-1903) and spoke about the subject with Francisco.
He told Castro that he had made a “complete recovery” and had “never felt constrained since then.”
He also revealed that when he lived in Argentina he was treated with Chinese acupuncture for back pain, that he suffered from “gallbladder stones” and that in 2004 he had a “temporary” heart problem due to the slight narrowing of an artery.
