Pope Francis leaves hospital ‘better than before’ intestinal surgery 9 days ago
ROME — Pope Francis was discharged Friday from the Rome hospital where he had abdominal surgery nine days earlier to repair a hernia and remove painful scarring, with his surgeon saying the pontiff is now “better than before” the hospitalization.
Francis, 86, left through the Gemelli hospital’s main exit in a wheelchair, smiling and waving and thanking a crowd of well-wishers, then stood up so that he could get into the small Vatican car awaiting him. In the brief distance before he could reach the white Fiat 500, reporters thrust microphones practically in his face, and the pope seemed to bat them away good-naturedly.
“Still alive,” the pope quipped when a reporter asked how he was. As he smiled and shook hands, his face looked wan and thinner than usual.
When asked by a reporter outside the hospital for a comment about the migrant disaster off Greece that has claimed dozens of lives and left hundreds missing, Francis replied: “So much sorrow.”
“The pope is well. He’s better than before,” Dr. Sergio Alfieri, the surgeon who performed the three-hour operation June 7, told reporters as the pope was driven away.
The Vatican press office announced Friday that Francis would make his traditional Sunday noon appearance at an Apostolic Palace window overlooking St. Peter’s Square to greet the public, an engagement that lasts about 10 minutes.
The pontiff says he wrote the letter shortly after his 2013 election in case medical problems eventually impeded him from carrying out his duties.
But his customary Wednesday general audience with thousands of faithful in the square “has been canceled to safeguard the post-surgical recovery of the Holy Father,” the announcement said. The general audience lasts about an hour and includes a speech by the pontiff.
Francis will instead meet Wednesday afternoon with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Vatican said.
Instead of going straight back to the Vatican, Francis stopped to pray for 10 minutes before an icon of the Virgin Mary at the St. Mary Major Basilica, which he often visits after trips abroad to give thanks. Francis stayed in his wheelchair as he prayed. He also went there after his discharge from the same hospital following treatment for bronchitis.
Tourists in the basilica excitedly snapped photos of the pontiff, and several people in the crowd outside wept as he left and headed for the Holy See hotel, where he lives on Vatican City grounds.
Pope Francis says he can no longer travel like he used to because of his strained knee ligaments.
Before he arrived back home, Francis made two more stops — first at a convent adjacent to the Vatican to greet nuns, and then outside one of the walled city’s gates, where he got out of the car to thank and shake hands with the police officers who provided a motorcycle escort.
Hours after the surgery, Alfieri said that the scarring, which had resulted from previous abdominal surgeries, had been increasingly causing the pope pain. There was also risk of an intestinal blockage if adhesions, or scar tissue, weren’t removed, according to the doctors.
No complications occurred during the surgery or while the pope was convalescing in Gemelli’s 10th-floor apartment reserved exclusively for hospitalization of pontiffs, according to the pope’s medical staff.
Alfieri has said that Francis, in choosing to have the surgery in June, calculated that he would bounce back in time for a planned August trip to Portugal. “He has confirmed all” his trips, the surgeon said.
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“Actually, he’ll be able to tackle them better than before, because now he won’t have the discomfort he had,″ Alfieri said.
Along with the pilgrimage to Portugal in early August for a Roman Catholic youth jamboree, Francis has a trip to Mongolia — a papal first — scheduled to start Aug. 31.
In just under two years, Francis has been hospitalized three times at Gemelli. In July 2021, he underwent surgery to remove a 13-inch section of his bowel because of a narrowing of his large intestine. That, as well as abdominal surgeries years back in his native Argentina before he became pontiff, had contributed to the painful scarring, according to Alfieri.
In early spring of this year, Francis was in the hospital to receive intravenous antibiotic treatment for bronchitis. As a young man in Argentina, Francis had a portion of one lung removed after an infection.
Pope Francis, whose leadership of the Roman Catholic Church has resonated with many Californians, celebrates his 10th anniversary as pope on March 13.
The latest hospitalization came just as Francis seemed to be walking better, with the aid of a cane, following months of often using a wheelchair because of a painful knee problem. He also has suffered from sciatica, a painful inflammation of a nerve that runs down from back to leg.
Alfieri expressed confidence that the pontiff would pace himself as he resumes his appointment-packed days at the Vatican.
“He’ll listen a little more to us, because he has important commitments that he has confirmed, including the trips,” Alfieri said.
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