Pope Francis “reacted well” to planned intestinal surgery on Sunday evening at a Rome hospital, the Vatican has announced.
In a statement late in the evening, Matteo Bruni, a Holy See spokesman, said Francis, 84, had general anaesthesia during the surgery necessitated by a stenosis, or narrowing, of the sigmoid portion of the large intestine.
Among those present in the operating room was the official papal physician, Dr Roberto Bernabei, whom Francis tapped earlier this year, the Associated Press reported. The pope’s previous physician had contracted Covid and died while hospitalised for cancer treatment.
Just hours earlier the pope had cheerfully greeted the public in St Peter’s Square and told them he would visit Hungary and Slovakia in September.
The surgery, at the Gemelli Polyclinic, a Catholic teaching hospital, is the pope’s first known treatment in hospital since he was elected to the papacy in 2013.
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Earlier, the Vatican said the 84-year-old pontiff had been diagnosed with “symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon”, otherwise described as a narrowing in the large intestine. The surgery was to be performed by Prof Sergio Alfieri, the director of Gemelli’s digestive surgery department.
A week ago, Francis had used his same Sunday appearance to ask the public for special prayers for himself, which might have been a reference to the planned surgery.
“I ask you to pray for the pope, pray in a special way. The pope needs your prayers,” Francis had said, thanking the faithful and adding: “I know you will do that.”
Francis is in generally good health, but did have part of one lung removed as a young man. He also suffers from sciatica, occasionally having painful bouts of the condition in which a nerve affects the lower back and leg. That has forced him at times to skip scheduled appearances.
The pope had a particularly demanding set of appointments last week, including celebrating a mass on Tuesday to mark the feast day honouring Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and presiding later in the week at a special prayer service for Lebanon. On Monday, he had a long private audience at the Vatican with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken. Throughout all those engagements, Francis appeared to be in good spirits.
Doctors at the Gemelli have performed surgery before on papal patients, including Pope John Paul II, who had a benign tumour in his colon removed in 1992.