He has repeated it often, especially in the last year, when his ailments and advancing age have fueled the usual rumors of resignation. Given this, Pope Francis already assured a few months ago, quite gracefully, that a Pope “rules with his head.” In short, for him, physical health is not an impediment, although, it must be admitted, Francisco turned 86 in December and health problems have been common in recent times.
In January, he joked with the Associated Press, who asked him how he was doing: “I could die even tomorrow, but come on, everything is under control. My health is good. And I always ask for grace, that the Lord give me a sense of humor.” assured. And about 20 days ago, when Swiss television asked him how much he had changed in ten years of pontificate, he insisted on the same thing: “I am old. I have less resistance, the knee injury was a physical humiliation, although now it is healing well.” . He was referring to his right knee, affected by what several doctors have suggested is gonarthrosis, but Bergoglio has always maintained that it was “a small fracture due to a fall.”
The fact is that the pain, since May of last year, has often forced him to use a wheelchair and undergo a series of treatments that, according to him, have worked: “Thanks to good therapy and magnetotherapy, to laser therapy, the bone has healed… I am already walking, I help myself with the cart, but I am walking”. This health problem has been made difficult by the chronic sciatica that has afflicted him for years, to the point of having to wear orthopedic shoes to facilitate walking and correct hip posture.
More complicated was the diverticular stenosis in the colon that in July 2021 forced him to undergo his first 11-day hospitalization at the Gemelli hospital and surgery under general anesthesia. “I have 33 centimeters less intestine,” said the Pope, who revealed in January that “diverticulitis has returned.” It is the only operation he has recently undergone, apart from a minor cataract operation that was performed on him in secret in 2019, at the Pius XI Clinic in Rome, and which was only revealed several months later. Previously, when he was 21 years old, he had an operation to remove the upper lobe of his right lung due to three cysts. “I was about to die”, he has acknowledged on occasion.
The Argentine newspaper ‘La Nación’ also talks about how he underwent gallbladder surgery when he was a young provincial of the Argentine Jesuits and about a ‘pre-infarction’ that he suffered in 2004, when he was already Archbishop of Buenos Aires, a heart problem that it had no consequences.
But Francisco does not like to talk about his health. He has been clear about his responsibilities as pontiff. During his trip to the Congo on February 2, he explained to his Jesuit brothers “that the Pope’s ministry is ad vitam” and that he does not think of the possibility of resigning, opened by Benedict XVI, except in exceptional cases. This could include a sudden problem that prevents him from being “fully conscious”, an eventuality for which he already signed a letter of resignation in 2013, as did his predecessors, from Paul VI to Ratzinger; or if he felt that “his strength fails”, like Benedict.
On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his pontificate, in statements to Swiss television, he was more precise about the reasons that could lead him to resign: “A fatigue that does not make you see things clearly. A lack of clarity, of knowing how to value the situations. A physical problem could also be the cause. I always ask and let myself be advised by people who know me, even some intelligent cardinals. And they tell me the truth,” he asserted.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
