Ailing pope ‘critical but stable’, Vatican says

Pope Francis, who is in hospital with pneumonia in both lungs, is still in a critical condition but is stable and working from his sick bed, the Vatican said Tuesday.

Catholics across the globe have been praying for the 88-year-old amid hope he may be turning a corner on what doctors warn could be a long path to recovery.

“The Holy Father’s clinical condition remains critical but stable,” the Vatican said the evening of Francis’s 12th day in the papal suite of Rome’s Gemelli hospital.

“There have been no acute respiratory episodes and hemodynamic parameters continue to be stable,” it said in a statement, referring to measurements such as heart rate and blood pressure.

Francis, admitted on February 14 with breathing difficulties, suffered asthmatic respiratory attacks at the weekend that required high levels of oxygen and blood transfusions to combat anaemia.

On Tuesday, “he underwent a scheduled follow-up CT scan in the evening for radiological monitoring of bilateral pneumonia”, the Vatican said.

“The prognosis remains reserved,” it said.

Despite his critical condition, the leader of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Catholics has striven to keep up with Church matters from his hospital suite on the Gemelli’s 10th floor, according to the Vatican.

“In the morning, after receiving the Eucharist, he resumed work activities,” the statement said.

– ‘Praying for you’ –

The Argentine pope worked Monday too, receiving the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Francis approved the canonisation of two Venezuelan and Italian laymen who died in the early 20th century, while authorising the first steps towards sainthood for three 19th-century priests.

He also called the parish priest of Gaza’s Catholic community, as he has routinely done since the war there broke out, the Vatican said.

This time, he was thanking him for a video the parish sent him.

“The whole world is praying for you… and everyone wishes you good health,” the priest said in the video, published on Vatican News.

Catholics left messages and candles outside the hospital, where a group of faithful held up a banner reading: “Today, more than ever, we need you Francis”.

Dozens of people attended special prayers for the pope at an Argentine church in Rome Tuesday evening, led by Italian Cardinal Baldassare Reina.

In the chapel of Our Lady of Lujan at the Santa Maria Addolorata church, faithful could leave messages for Francis in a notebook, which would then be sent to him.

“Prayers are being sent from every part of the world… Let it become a choral prayer, (to) give Pope Francis health, strength, give him the ability to face this moment too, as he has always done”, Reina said.

– ‘Breath of fresh air’ –

In Buenos Aires, where the former Jorge Bergoglio served as archbishop before being made pope in 2013, hundreds of Argentines prayed for the pontiff.

Speaking in the plaza where Bergoglio used to rail against injustice and inequality, Archbishop Jorge Garcia Cuerva called Francis’s papacy “a breath of oxygen for a world suffocated by violence, suffocated by selfishness, suffocated by exclusion”.

“Let our prayer be that breath of fresh air that reaches his lungs so that he can recover his health,” he said.

Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, a former coordinator of the pope’s Council of Cardinals, told La Repubblica daily Tuesday he felt hopeful the pope would pull through.

“It’s not yet time for him to go to heaven,” Maradiaga said.

“He is someone who does not back down in the face of difficulty, does not get discouraged, does not freeze, and does not stop moving forward,” he told the paper.

– Recovery time –

Doctors have cautioned that any recovery will take time and that Francis will likely stay in hospital beyond this week.

The pope, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, has increasingly suffered health complications in recent years.

He is prone to respiratory infections, is overweight and suffers knee and hip pain that has led to his reliance on a wheelchair.

It takes a young person at least two weeks to get over double pneumonia, Massimo Andreoni, scientific director of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, told newspaper La Stampa.

“For an older person like Pope Francis, with all the added complications… you have to wait even longer for a complete recovery,” Andreoni said.