At the request of doctors, the pope will not celebrate the Angelus on Sunday

Francis is continuing his convalescence on the tenth floor of the Roman Gemelli hospital, according to new information given by doctors and the Vatican, Saturday June 10. Three days after his operation for an abdominal hernia, Wednesday June 7, Pope Francis is recovering regularly.

“All infusions have already been stopped in the past few days and the Holy Father is on a semi-liquid diet. He is apyretic, meaning he has no fever, and haemodynamically stable, meaning that all cardiorespiratory functions are normal,” said Professor Sergio Alfieri, who himself led the operation, during a new press conference organized in the hall of the Gemelli hospital.

The surgeon claimed that the medical team had asked the pope to give up celebrating the Sunday Angelus prayer in public. Which Francis accepted, content to say this prayer “in private” from his hospital room, and not from the balcony of his private hospital apartments, as he had done in July 2021, after his operation of the settler, or as John Paul II had also done in his time. It is the first time since the beginning of his pontificate, 10 years ago, that the pope will not celebrate the Angelus in public.

“We asked him for this sacrifice,” said the surgeon. We know very well that it is a sacrifice for him. The doctor explains that the pope must limit his movements as much as possible to avoid any tension in the abdominal wall, which would threaten healing, and could even lead to a “return to the operating room”.

“No one is stopping the pope from doing anything”

The doctor has sketched of his famous patient a portrait of an independent man on whom no decision is imposed. “Nobody is stopping the pope from doing anything. It is he who decides alone, ”insisted the doctor.

In fact, François asked the doctor to make sure that he could honor his trips, “in August” and “in November”. François must go to Lisbon and Mongolia in August, then to Marseilles in September. No commitment has yet been announced for November, even if some people in the Vatican are talking about the possibility of a new trip to Asia at this time. Francis indeed still wants to go to Papua New Guinea and East Timor, as he had planned to do in the fall of 2020, before the pandemic prevented him from doing so.

“We hope to convince him to stay at least for next week”

Professor Alfieri explained that he had asked the pope to stay several more days in the hospital, whereas in this kind of operation, patients are usually discharged after four or five days. But because François “is not a person who saves himself” and will return to work immediately, “we asked him to do part of the convalescence in the hospital”. He specified that the total healing process required a period of three months.

“We hope to convince him to stay for at least the next week,” said the doctor. “It’s very important that he gets back in shape. He is not someone who can be imposed, we ask for a week, he decides. All of the pope’s public engagements have been canceled until June 18, the Vatican announced on June 7.

The surgeon also clarified that the pope was following a classic painkiller treatment, so as to “ensure that he breathes normally”. “Everything is proceeding very normally. »

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