Hospitalized in critical condition with double pneumonia, Pope Francis was well enough to meet with the Vatican secretary of state to approve new decrees for possible saints and make some major governing decisions that suggest he is getting essential work done while remaining very much in charge.
The audience, which occurred Monday, signaled that the machinery of the Vatican was still grinding on and looking ahead even with Francis, 88, hospitalized and doctors warning his prognosis is guarded.
Decisions on saints and a formal meeting of cardinals
The Vatican’s Tuesday noon bulletin contained a series of significant decisions, most importantly that Francis had met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, the so-called Vatican “substitute” or chief of staff. It was the first known time the pope had met with Parolin, who is essentially the Vatican prime minister, since his Feb. 14 hospitalization.
During the audience, Francis approved decrees for five people for beatification and two new saints. Francis also decided to “convene a consistory about the future canonizations.”
Such an audience and decision is par for the course when Francis is at the Vatican. He regularly approves decrees from the Vatican’s saint-making office, albeit during audiences with the head of the office, not Parolin. But the calling of a consistory, which is a formal meeting of cardinals to set the dates for future canonizations, was also significant, given his illness.
It was at a banal consistory to set new dates for canonizations on Feb. 11, 2013, when Pope Benedict XVI announced, in Latin, that he would resign because he couldn’t keep up with the rigors of the papacy. Francis has said he too would consider resignation after Benedict “opened the door” to it and became the first pope in 600 years to retire.
Francis has said that he has decided that he would live in Rome, outside the Vatican, and be called “emeritus bishop of Rome” rather than emeritus pope. He has also written a letter of resignation, to be invoked if he became medically incapacitated.
In a subsequent bulletin, the Vatican announced that Francis had additionally named a handful of new bishops for Brazil, named a new archbishop for Vancouver and modified the law for the Vatican City State to create a new hierarchy.
Francis recently named the first-ever woman to head the city-state, Sister Raffaella Petrini, who takes over March 1. In the announcement Tuesday, Francis specifically empowered her to lead and to tell her priestly deputies what to do.
Many if not all of these decisions were likely in the works for some time. But the Vatican has said Francis has been doing some work in the hospital, including signing documents, and regardless there is no provision in the Catholic Church to transfer full papal power except in the case of a resignation or death of a pope.
The only other outsider who is known to have visited the pope, other than his personal secretaries and medical personnel, is Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, who visited Feb. 19.
Pope slept well
On Tuesday morning, the Vatican’s typically brief morning update said: “The pope slept well, all night.”
The previous evening, doctors had said he remained in critical condition at Rome’s Gemelli hospital with double pneumonia but reported a “slight improvement” in some laboratory results. In the most upbeat bulletin in days, the Vatican said Francis had resumed work from his hospital room, calling a parish in Gaza City that he has kept in touch with since the war there began.
Doctors have said the condition of the Argentine pope, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, is touch-and-go, given his age, fragility and pre-existing lung disease before the pneumonia set in.
But in Monday’s update, they said he hadn’t had any more respiratory crises since Saturday, and the flow and concentration of supplemental oxygen has been slightly reduced. The slight kidney insufficiency detected on Sunday was not causing alarm at the moment, doctors said.
Allies and ordinary faithful hopeful
Francis’ right-wing critics have been spreading dire rumors about his condition, but his allies have cheered him on and expressed hope that he will pull through. Many noted that from the very night of his election as pope, Francis had asked for the prayers of ordinary faithful, a request he repeats daily.
“I’m a witness of everything he did for the church, with a great love of Jesus,” Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga told La Repubblica. “Humanly speaking, I don’t think it’s time for him to go to Paradise.”
At Gemelli on a rainy Tuesday morning, ordinary Romans and visitors alike were also praying for the pope. Hoang Phuc Nguyen, who lives in Canada but was visiting Rome to participate in a Holy Year pilgrimage, took the time to come to Gemelli to say a special prayer for the pope at the statue of St. John Paul II outside the main entrance.
“We heard that he is in the hospital right now and we are very worried about his health,” Nguyen said. “He is our father and it is our responsibility to pray for him.”
Prayer intentions for Lent released
In another sign that the Vatican bureaucracy was running even in Francis’ absence, the Holy See press office released the pope’s prayer intentions for Lent, the solemn period leading up to Easter. In it, the pope urged the faithful to keep hope alive, and to put themselves in the place of migrants and the less fortunate. Francis signed the document on Feb. 6, a week before he was hospitalized.
“It would be a good Lenten exercise for us to compare our daily life with that of some migrant or foreigner, to learn how to sympathize with their experiences and in this way discover what God is asking of us so that we can better advance on our journey to the house of the Father,” Francis wrote in the text.
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.