Pope continues showing ‘slight’ improvement, Vatican says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — On his sixth full day in Rome’s Gemelli hospital, “the Holy Father’s clinical condition is improving slightly,” the Vatican said.

He continues to be without fever and “his hemodynamic parameters continue to be stable,” said an evening bulletin Feb. 20. “Hemodynamic parameters” refer to a series of tests measuring cardiac output and other indicators of whether a patient’s heart health is being impacted by a given therapy.

“He received the Eucharist this morning and afterward dedicated time to work,” the bulletin said. Previously, the Vatican said he was reading and working on texts. The suite of rooms reserved for the pope on the 10th floor of the Gemelli hospital includes an office for the pope’s secretaries and a chapel.

The morning bulletin Feb. 20 specified that the pope had gotten out of bed to eat breakfast.

Pope Francis, who celebrated his 88th birthday in December, has been in Rome’s Gemelli hospital since Feb. 14; he was diagnosed with double pneumonia.

While Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, did not confirm that Pope Francis had received the sacrament of the anointing of the sick, it was presumed that he had since the church encourages those with a serious illness to receive it. It is not reserved to those in immediate danger of death.

Several times during Pope Francis’ stay, his medical team — made up of doctors from the Vatican and from the Gemelli staff — have adjusted his medications to fight his respiratory ailment more precisely.

Spanish Cardinal Juan José Omella Omella of Barcelona, who was at the Vatican to present a peace and dialogue initiative for young people around the Mediterranean Sea, was stopped by reporters Feb. 20 outside the Vatican press office and asked about the pope’s health.

With the medical bulletins the Vatican is putting out, he joked, everyone needs to start studying medicine. But “the first lesson, I’d say, is that the pope is doing well.”

The news that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited the pope Feb. 19 and that the pope was getting out of bed and had breakfast Feb. 20 in an armchair are good signs, the cardinal said.

“I have not been to the Gemelli, but it seems that things are going much better,” Cardinal Omella said; “it’s hopeful news.”

A reporter asked the cardinal if he thought the pope would resign. Cardinal Omella said he had never asked the pope what he would or would not do.

“The pope knows what he has to do, I imagine, and since his head is fine, thanks be to God, he will decide,” he said.

But “I hope the pope will continue,” he said. “He has set the church on a good path,” especially by promoting the synodal style of all Catholics taking responsibility for the mission of the church and by focusing the Holy Year on hope.

Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille, France, who also was at the Vatican to talk about the Mediterranean initiative also was asked about Pope Francis’ ability to continue to lead the church and about the possibility of a papal resignation.

“I’m not worried about his lucidity,” the cardinal said, nor is he worried about the pope somehow lacking the freedom to decide whether it is best for the church that he remain or resign.

“He is a fighter,” Cardinal Aveline said, not in the sense of being a warrior, but in the sense of being “someone who prays a lot. And what comes in prayer, what has matured, then he applies it, whatever the obstacles, whatever the difficulties.”

In the Roman Missal, which contains the prayers used at Mass, there is a prayer that says, “Lord, give us a clear vision of what we have to do and the strength to accomplish it,” the French cardinal said. “For me, that prayer describes his personality.”

Retired Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi told the Italian radio station RTL that he could imagine Pope Francis resigning one day. “There is no question that if he were in a situation where his ability to have direct contact, as he loves to have, to be able to communicate in an immediate, incisive and decisive way was compromised, then I think he might decide to resign.”

Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, president of the Italian bishops’ conference, told reporters the fact that the pope was out of bed, was reading and had a visit from the Italian prime minister “means that things are going in the right direction toward a full recovery that we hope comes soon.”

According to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, when Pope Francis met Prime Minister Meloni at the hospital Feb. 19, he joked: “Some prayed the pope would be taken to Heaven, but the Lord of the harvest decided to leave me here a while.”

At the Vatican news conference the next day, both Cardinals Omella and Aveline said Catholics are called to pray for the pope and leave the future to him and to God.

Contributing to this story was Carol Glatz at the Vatican.

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