Pope Francis marked the one-week point Friday in his hospital stay, getting up and out of bed to eat breakfast as the 88-year-old pontiff continued fighting pneumonia and a complex respiratory infection, the Vatican said.
The Vatican late Thursday reported a “slight improvement” in his overall clinical condition, with his heart working well. But it will still take some time to understand if the various drug therapies are working, and outside doctors have said that regardless, recovery from pneumonia in such a fragile patient could take up to two weeks.
According to the one-line morning bulletin Friday, “The night went well, this morning Pope Francis got up and had breakfast.”
Francis was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14 after a case of bronchitis worsened; doctors later diagnosed a complex respiratory infection, involving bacteria, virus and other organisms and the onset of pneumonia in both lungs on top of asthmatic bronchitis. They prescribed “absolute rest.”
As his hospital stay drags on, some of Francis’ cardinals have begun responding to the obvious question circulating: whether Francis might resign if he becomes irreversibly sick and unable to carry on. Francis has said he would consider it, after Pope Benedict XVI “opened the door” to popes retiring, but has shown no signs of stepping down and in fact has asserted recently that the job of pope is for life.
But the question is now in the air, ever since Benedict became the first pope in 600 years to retire when he concluded in 2013 that he didn’t have the physical strength to carry on the rigors of the globe-trotting papacy.
“Everything is possible,” said Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, the archbishop of Marseille, France, when asked Thursday.
Another cardinal, Gianfranco Ravasi, suggested it was more than just a possibility.
“There is no question that if he (Francis) was in a situation where his ability to have direct contact (with people) as he likes to do … was compromised, then I think he might decide to resign,” Ravasi was quoted as telling RTL 102.5 radio.
Francis confirmed in 2022 that, shortly after being elected pontiff, he wrote a resignation letter in case medical problems impeded him from carrying out his duties. There is no provision in canon law for what to do if a pope becomes incapacitated.
But there is no indication Francis is in any way incapacitated or is even considering stepping aside. During his hospital stay, he has continued to work, including making bishop appointments. After a hospital stay in 2021, he bristled when he learned that some clergy were allegedly already preparing for a conclave to elect his successor.
Francis had an acute case of pneumonia in 2023 and is prone to respiratory infections in winter.
Doctors say pneumonia in such a fragile, elderly patient makes him particularly prone to complications given the difficulty in being able to effectively expel fluid from his lungs. While his heart is strong, Francis isn’t a particularly healthy 88-year-old. He is overweight, isn’t physically active, uses a wheelchair because of bad knees, had part of one lung removed as a young man, and has admitted to being a not-terribly-cooperative patient in the past.
Francis has had two longer hospital stays during his nearly 12-year pontificate. He spent 10 days at Gemelli in 2021 when he had 33 centimeters (13 inches) of his colon removed. In 2023, he was admitted for nine days for surgery to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair an abdominal hernia.
As he recovers this time around, the Catholic faithful have been participating in special moments of prayer.
In the Philippines, Asia’s largest Catholic nation, Filipino worshippers held an hourlong prayer at the Manila Cathedral on Friday for the pope’s rapid recovery. Other Catholics were urged to pray in their homes and communities for the pontiff, who drew a record crowd of 6 million people when he celebrated Mass in a Manila park in 2015, according to official estimates at the time.
“The Philippines has a place very close to his heart,” said the Vatican’s ambassador to Manila, Archbishop Charles John Brown.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.