(Vatican City) Pope Francis, 86, will undergo emergency surgery under general anesthesia on Wednesday afternoon in Rome for a risk of intestinal obstruction, the Vatican announced.
This surgical intervention will lead to “several days” of hospitalization, said in a press release the director of the press service of the Holy See, Matteo Bruni.
Wednesday morning, the Argentine pope presided as every week the general audience in St. Peter’s Square in front of thousands of faithful.
“At the end of the general audience, the Holy Father went to the A. Gemelli University Hospital where, at the beginning of the afternoon, he will undergo a surgical operation of laparotomy and plastic surgery of the wall abdominal with prostheses, under general anesthesia”, indicated Mr. Bruni.
Laparotomy is an operation that involves opening the abdomen.
“The operation, organized in recent days by the medical team assisting the Holy Father, became necessary due to an incisional hernia that causes recurrent, painful and worsening subocclusive syndromes,” said he added.
Tuesday morning, the head of the Catholic Church had already gone to the Gemelli hospital for “examinations”, but the Vatican had not communicated on the nature of the latter.
Background
In July 2021, the Bishop of Rome had already been hospitalized for ten days in this hospital for a left colectomy (surgery to remove a portion of the colon), scheduled for symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon.
He claims to have kept “sequelae” from the anesthesia.
At the end of March, François had again received antibiotic treatment for three days in the same establishment for a respiratory infection.
After his operation on Wednesday, the pope should again stay on the tenth floor of the Gemelli hospital, in the same room as that used by Pope John Paul II, operated on numerous times in this establishment.
Pope Francis said two weeks ago in an interview with Spanish-language television Telemundo that this “pneumonia” had been treated “in time”. “If we had waited a few more hours, it would have been much more serious,” he said.
Jorge Bergoglio also suffers from chronic knee pain, which forces him to move around in a wheelchair or using a cane.
The pope, whose health appears increasingly fragile, had also canceled his appointments on May 26 due to a feverish state, which however did not require hospitalization. He resumed his activities the next day.
The health of Jorge Bergoglio, elected in 2013, regularly fuels speculation about the possibility of a renunciation of his office and his succession.
He has repeatedly said he would consider resigning – like his predecessor Benedict XVI, who died in December – if his health were to fail, but recently claimed that was not on the cards.
Despite these twists and turns, François continued to travel: he was to go to Portugal at the beginning of August, to Mongolia at the beginning of September and to Marseilles on September 23.