Cardinal says 88-year-old pontiff is ‘probably close to death’. Pope Francis was resting on Monday morning, according to the Vatican, marking the 10th day of his hospitalisation due to a lung infection complicated by the early stages of kidney failure.
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The Vatican's latest statement, released on Monday, indicated that the 88-year-old pontiff had a peaceful night. “The night passed well, the pope slept and is resting,” the statement read. It did not specify whether Pope Francis was awake at the time of the announcement.
Late on Sunday, medical reports revealed that blood tests indicated early kidney failure, which doctors stated was being managed. While Francis’s condition remains critical, no new respiratory crises have occurred since Saturday. He is currently receiving high levels of supplemental oxygen. On Sunday, he was reported to be alert and responsive, and he participated in Mass.
Doctors have said Francis' condition is touch-and-go, given his age, fragility and pre-existing lung disease. He suffered pleurisy as a young man and had part of one lung removed. They have warned that the main threat facing Francis is sepsis, a serious infection of the blood that can occur as a complication of pneumonia.
To date there has been no reference to any onset of sepsis in the medical updates provided by the Vatican, including on Sunday. “The complexity of the clinical picture, and the necessary wait for drug therapies to provide some feedback, dictate that the prognosis remains reserved,” the doctors concluded in the latest medical update.
Monday marks Francis' 10th day in the hospital, making this equal to the longest hospitalisation of his papacy. He spent 10 days at Rome's Gemelli hospital in 2021 after he had 33cm of his colon removed. In New York on Sunday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan acknowledged what church leaders in Rome weren't saying publicly: that the Catholic faithful were united “at the bedside of a dying father”.
“As our Holy Father Pope Francis is in very, very fragile health, and probably close to death,” Dolan said in his homily from the pulpit of St. Patrick's Cathedral, though he later told reporters he hoped and prayed that Francis would “bounce back”.
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