Pope Francis gestures as he arrives for a weekly common viewers at Paul-VI corridor within the Vatican on January 22, 2025. Ailing Pope Francis’s situation is “steady” and he has not suffered a recent respiratory disaster, the Vatican stated on March 6, 2025, because the 88-year-old nears three weeks in hospital with pneumonia. (Picture by Andreas SOLARO / AFP)
VATICAN CITY, Holy See — Ailing Pope Francis’s situation is “steady” and he has not suffered a recent respiratory disaster, the Vatican stated Thursday, because the 88-year-old nears three weeks in hospital with pneumonia.
The Argentine pontiff, head of the worldwide Catholic Church since 2013, has been in Rome’s Gemelli hospital since February 14.
“The scientific circumstances of the Holy Father have remained steady in comparison with the earlier days”, the Vatican stated in a night medical bulletin.
There had been no repeat of Monday’s respiratory failure, it stated, and the pope’s blood work “remained steady.”
Francis continued together with his respiratory workouts and physiotherapy, didn’t have a fever and managed to do a bit of labor in each the morning and afternoon, it stated.
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The Vatican has been offering twice-daily updates on the pope’s well being, a morning one on how the evening went, and a night medical bulletin.
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However on Thursday it stated that “in view of the steadiness of the scientific image, the subsequent medical bulletin might be launched on Saturday.”
Nonetheless, “the medical doctors are nonetheless sustaining a reserved prognosis”, it stated, that means they won’t say how they count on his situation to evolve.
For the final three nights Francis — who had a part of a lung eliminated as a younger man — has worn an oxygen masks to assist him sleep.
On Thursday morning, as on yesterday, he switched to a much less onerous nasal cannula — a plastic tube tucking into his nostrils — which offers high-flow oxygen, a Vatican supply stated.
Francis missed the formal Ash Wednesday celebrations in Rome marking the beginning of Lent, however took half in a blessing in his personal suite on the tenth ground of the Gemelli.
The chief of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Catholics has not been seen in public since his hospitalization — the longest of his papacy.
Nor has the Vatican issued any pictures, though Francis has printed a number of texts.
‘Ideas and prayers’
Throughout earlier hospitalizations, the pope appeared on the Gemelli balcony for his weekly Angelus prayer at midday on Sundays.
However he has missed the final three, and no announcement has but been made about whether or not he’ll make an look this weekend.
The Vatican confirmed Thursday that senior cardinal Michael Czerny would stand in for the pope and lead the mass this weekend marking the primary Sunday of Lent.
The mass was additionally a part of celebrations for the Jubilee 2025, a Holy 12 months led by the pope, devoted this weekend to volunteers.
The Holy See stated Thursday that the occasion “takes on a good deeper that means, because the ideas and prayers of all of the brothers and sisters flip to the Holy Father and the expertise he’s going by means of.”
Pilgrims will pray in entrance of the hospital on Saturday, it stated, as well-wishers have since Francis was admitted.
The pope was initially identified with bronchitis however this developed into pneumonia in each lungs, sparking alarm throughout the globe.
On February 22, he suffered a “extended asthmatic respiratory disaster” and on February 28 had “an remoted disaster of bronchospasm” — a tightening of the muscle tissue that line the airways within the lungs.
On Monday, Francis “skilled two episodes of acute respiratory failure, attributable to a major accumulation of endobronchial mucus and consequent bronchospasm,” based on the Vatican.
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Francis’s well being has often led to hypothesis, notably amongst his critics, as as to if he may resign like his predecessor, Benedict XVI.
