“During some recent medical examinations, the doctors found a small, localized nodule in my lung”. Leo XIV, 71, made the announcement at the end of the greetings after the Angelus on Sunday 11 October in St Peter’s Square. The nodule, the Pope explained, “was detected at a very early stage and is well-localized”, and the doctors advised removing it. The Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, specified that “the operation is scheduled for the first days of this week and the estimated post-operative recovery time will be about one week”. Vatican News reports that it will take place at Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic. The nature of the nodule has not been disclosed. The announcement comes less than a month before his apostolic journey to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, scheduled for 6-17 November.
An announcement made at the Angelus
The choice to speak in person before the crowd has a precise precedent. On 12 July 1992, John Paul II told the faithful: “This evening I will go to the Gemelli Polyclinic to undergo some diagnostic tests”. Three days later he had an intestinal tumour removed, which proved benign. Unlike his predecessor, Leo XIV said what had been found and what he had decided: “The doctors believe that it is best to intervene, so, following their advice, I have decided to undergo surgery to remove it”. In recent decades the news has more often come through spokesmen. On 4 July 2021, when Pope Francis had already been admitted to the Gemelli after the Angelus, Bruni announced “planned surgery for a symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon”. On 7 June 2023 it was again the Press Office that explained that the operation, a laparotomy, “became necessary due to an incisional laparocele (hernia)”. On other occasions the news emerged only after the event. On 12 February 2013, the day after Benedict XVI announced his resignation, Fr Federico Lombardi, then Director of the Holy See Press Office, confirmed a report by the Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore: some three months earlier, the Pope’s pacemaker battery had been replaced. It was “a routine operation”, he said, which “had nothing to do with the decision of the Holy Father”.
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Five Popes in surgery since 1899
Since the end of the 19th century, five Popes are documented to have undergone at least one surgical operation during their pontificate. The first was also a Leo: in March 1899, 21 years after his election, Leo XIII had an inflamed cyst that had troubled him for years removed. On 4 November 1967 it was the turn of Paul VI, operated on for a benign prostate condition by the team of surgeon Pietro Valdoni, in an operating theatre set up inside the Apostolic Palace. But it was with John Paul II that the tenth floor of the Gemelli became familiar to the faithful around the world: emergency surgery after the assassination attempt of 13 May 1981, then a femur operation in 1994, an appendectomy in 1996 and finally the tracheotomy of 24 February 2005, a few weeks before his death. Between 1981 and 2005, 22 Angelus and Regina Caeli messages came from the hospital, the first on 17 May 1981, four days after the shooting, with the Pope’s voice relayed to St Peter’s Square. Benedict XVI underwent surgery on his right wrist in Aosta on 17 July 2009, after a fall during his mountain holiday. Francis, besides the operations of 2021 and 2023, had part of a lung removed as a young man. Leo XIV is set to become the sixth name on this list, and does so with a request to the crowd: “I thank you for your spiritual closeness and entrust myself to your prayers”.
Reactions in Italy and the United States
The call to prayer drew an immediate response. “We are a family: Holy Father, you are not alone!”, said Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna and President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), thanking the Pope “for the simplicity and trust with which he has made us share in this trial”. The Diocese of Rome, through Cardinal Baldassare Reina, the Pope’s Vicar General, “draws close to him, assuring him of closeness and prayer”. In the United States, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, joined the bishops’ prayers to those of the faithful: “May the hand of Pope Leo’s surgeons be guided by the divine physician Jesus Christ”. President Sergio Mattarella assured the Pope that he could count on “the heartfelt thoughts of countless people, in Italy and in every part of the world, whether believers or non-believers”, renewing his “most sincere wishes for a peaceful convalescence and a prompt and complete recovery”. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she was “certain that the Italian people, too, will not fail to offer their support and affection”.
From Uruguay, the first stop of the Latin American journey, the Bishops’ Conference said that “at present no changes are planned to the agenda of the apostolic journey”. Cardinal Daniel Sturla, Archbishop of Montevideo, asked for prayers for the Pope’s prompt recovery and urged the faithful to “continue with greater enthusiasm the preparation of his visit to our land”. Meanwhile, the bishops’ note reads, “preparations to welcome him in Uruguay and to share together ‘a great joy’ continue with hope”.
The post Leo XIV to undergo lung surgery: the Angelus announcement, reactions from bishops and Mattarella, papal precedents first appeared on AgenSIR.