Concerns persist regarding Pope Francis, 88, who remains hospitalized at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital with bilateral pneumonia, as the talk of him resigning from the papacy begins to swirl. An update from the Vatican on Wednesday evening spoke of a “slight improvement” in his clinical condition based on blood tests, and on Thursday, after a “serene night,” he had breakfast in an armchair and “continued his therapy and work activities,” according to Vatican sources, including the appointment of Reverend François Gourdon of the Angers Diocese as bishop of Saint-Dié in France.
The Pontiff has been in the hospital for seven days now and there is talk of at least another week if all goes well. On Wednesday, he had a brief private meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the Polyclinic, who later said she found him alert and responsive. “We joked like we usually do,” she said. “He has not lost his proverbial sense of humor.” The Pope is being treated with cortisone and antibiotics.
The question remains whether Francis might resign, as he has not ruled out the possibility in the past should he not be able to fulfill his papal duties. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi mulled over this eventuality when interviewed by RTL radio: “I think he could do it, because he is a person who, from this point of view, is quite decisive in his choices. So far he has decided to stay the course.” And for now, according to Ravasi, there is no question of that: “The apprehension was there, it is true, especially when the bilateral pneumonia syndrome came up, which, in a person with a lung that has had a lobe removed in the past, is obviously a rather difficult situation to overcome. However, it is not a critical situation, as some media have suspected. I was leaving the Vatican the other night and a reporter was already asking me if I had seen the Pope return to Santa Marta (where Francis normally resides) due to negative complications. But no, everything was normal.”
The pope is expected to travel in May to Nicaea, Turkey, for the 1700th anniversary of the first council of Catholic bishops in the year 325. In the meantime, outside Gemelli and beyond, people are wishing him a swift recovery.
