Yara Nardi Reuters
ROME — All through the morning Sunday, people kept arriving, transforming the outdoor square in front of the sprawling Gemelli Polyclinic hospital. As noon approached, they baked under the sun, waiting: nuns, priests, police, nurses, hundreds of ordinary Italians. A French choir practiced its tunes. Volunteers passed out water. Almost everybody looked upward, squinting at a particular 10th floor hospital balcony.
And then, with a roar, out onto the balcony walked hospital patient Pope Francis, 84, seven days after surgery.
“Dear brothers and sisters, good morning,” the pope said, looking down, extending a hand over the crowd.
“Good morning,” many shouted back.
It was Francis’s first public appearance since he’d had part of his colon removed, and in a sense, he was just maintaining his usual schedule delivering the weekly Angelus blessing — this time from the 10th floor of a hospital instead of the usual window overlooking St. Peter’s Square.
“I am happy to keep this Sunday appointment,” Francis said.
[Pope Francis responded well to colon surgery, Vatican says]
But for those who came to see Francis, this Sunday was much different from the others, because it was a chance to give the pope their support, to gauge his recovery, and even to see a little bit of his vulnerability. Francis appeared in good spirits but seemed slightly weakened. He held on to the lectern for support as he walked onto the balcony, and during his 10 minutes of remarks and prayers, his voice sounded a little clipped and tired.
“There was fatigue in his speech,” said Claudia Bonavoglia, 58, a Roman who’d come to see him. “I was very moved to hear him. It was a beautiful emotion.”
Francis, during his Angelus, talked about the importance of caring for the sick, and of making health care free for all. He thanked the health staff at Gemelli Polyclinic, where he has been treated, and at other hospitals. (“They work hard!” Francis said.) He also asked for special prayers for children suffering from sickness.
Francis did not speak about his own surgery or when he might be discharged. Only a week earlier, he’d given the Angelus at St. Peter’s Square, revealing nothing amiss, and then three hours later the Vatican issued a surprise announcement that he was going in for a “scheduled” bowel surgery. The Vatican said the operation addressed what had been a “severe” narrowing of his large intestine.
Riccardo De Luca
AP
Faithful watch, on a giant screen set up in St Peter's Square at the Vatican, Pope Francis as he appears on a balcony of the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, Sunday, July 11, 2021, where he is recovering from intestinal surgery, for the traditional Sunday blessing and Angelus prayer.
The Vatican has since offered daily progress reports — a few sentences, emailed to journalists every day at noon — that depict the pontiff on a mostly normal path to recovery. Tuesday, he had breakfast, read some newspapers, and got up to walk around. Wednesday, he had a fever in the evening. Thursday morning, a battery of tests showed no infection, and the fever was gone. By Friday morning, he had resumed his work.
The Vatican initially said the pope was expected to stay at Gemelli for roughly seven days. It has provided no updates.
Since Sunday, Francis has been staying in a wing of this Catholic hospital dedicated to papal care. Though this is believed to be his first hospital stay as pontiff, the facility became a common backdrop during the pontificate of John Paul II, who stayed at Gemelli after a 1981 assassination attempt for which he needed six hours of emergency surgery, and many times in subsequent years for an appendectomy, a fractured femur, a dislocated right shoulder, and the removal of a benign intestinal tumor, among other health issues. He died in 2005.
John Paul II performed the Angelus from the hospital on several occasions, and at one point he termed the facility “Vatican number three” — after the Holy See’s territory and the traditional papal summer retreat of Castel Gandolfo.
“I thank you pilgrims, who this time have found the way to reach this ‘Vatican number three’ to be together, to pray together, to sing together,” John Paul II said from the hospital in 1996. “We hope that next Sunday we will have the Angelus from ‘Vatican number one.’ ”
Pope Francis’s surgery adds urgency to questions about the remaining years of his papacy
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