One Month and 26 Days After Leaving Hospital, Suffering from a Respiratory Infection, the Pope Is News Again Due to His Health.
On Friday morning, May 26, the Holy See Press Office reported that “Because of a feverish state, Pope Francis hasn’t received in audience.” Not known are which audiences were programmed as, in fact, the list offered under embargo to accredited journalists was not sent, which implies that the Holy Father’s malaise did not start that morning.
The Pontiff certainly had a tight agenda the previous day, Thursday the 25th : from the audience to officials of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development, ecclesiastics such as the Nuncio in Cuba, the Nuncio in Albania, the Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization (Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle), new priests and deacons of the diocese of Rome, to Indonesia’s Minister of Energy (accompanied by his family), the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity, the diocesan referents of the Italian Synodal Path and, in the afternoon, Scholas Ocurrentes . . . an exhausting agenda for an 86-year-old Bishop.
In the most recent interview, granted to the Telemundo network on May 25, 2023, the Pope answered questions on the bronchitis that at the end of last March took him to the hospital: “Yes, it was really something unexpected. It was acute pneumonia [. . . ] but we caught it in time, I was told, and if we had waited a few more hours, it would have been more serious. But I left in four days, I left.”
And, regarding his knee, he answered the Presenter of the same television network: “Much better. I can now walk. The knee was healing and, before, I couldn’t walk. Now I’m walking again. There are days that are more painful, such as today. Other days not so, but it’s part of the process.”