Rome (AP) – Pope Francis was in critical condition but stable on Tuesday while working from hospital while fighting double pneumonia, and the Vatican announced major governance decisions that suggest that he gets a essential work and looking towards the future.
The Vatican evening update said that the 88 -year -old Pope had not had new respiratory crises and that his blood parameters were stable. He underwent a cat tracking scan on Tuesday evening to check the pulmonary infection, but no results were provided. The doctors said his prognosis remained kept.
“In the morning, after receiving the Eucharist, he resumed the work activities,” said the Vatican statement.
Decisions on the saints and an official meeting of the cardinals
The Vatican Tuesday midday bulletin contained a series of important decisions that Francis had taken, especially since he had met on Monday with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the “substitute” of the Vatican or the chief of staff.
It was the first time known that the Pope had met the Paroline, which is essentially the Prime Minister of the Vatican, since his hospitalization on February 14 and the first outsider known for having called François since the visit of Francis Italian, Giorgia Meloni, on 19 FEBRUARY.
During the public, Francis approved decrees for two new saints and five people for beatification – the first step towards possible holiness. Francis also summoned a consistory, or an official meeting of the cardinals, to fix the dates for future canonizations.
Francis regularly approves the decrees of Vatican saint manufacturing office When he is at the Vatican, although during the public with the chef of the office, not Paroline. A consistory is a necessary ceremony stage in this process of manufacturing saints, and it is normal that no date is given at the beginning.
It was not clear, however, why there was such an urgency to approve the decrees while the Pope was in critical condition, while some of the new saints proposed await years, even decades, to progress.
The signing of the decrees was used to show the Pope in full charge and provided a public way to announce the public of Parolin. But that also raised a few questions.
It was also A trivial consistory to fix the dates For the canonizations of February 11, 2013, that Pope Benedict XVI announced, in Latin, that he would resign because he could not follow the rigors of the papacy.
Francis said he was also planning to resign after Benoît “Open opened the door” And became the first pope in 600 years to retire.
Giovanna Chirri, the journalist of the Italian news agency Ansa who covered the Consistory that day and broke the story because she understood Latin, said that she did not think that Francis would follow the traces of Benedict , “even if some wanted it.”
“I could be wrong, but I hope not,” she told the Associated Press. “As long as he is alive, the world and the Church need him.”
Francis’ English biographer, Austen Ivereigh, said it was possible, and that all that matters is that Francis is “entirely free to make the right decision”.
“The pope has always said that the papacy was for life, and he showed that there was no problem with a fragile and elderly pope,” said Ivereigh. “But he also said that if he never had a long -term degenerative or debilitating condition which prevents him from fully exercising the papal ministry, he would consider resigning. And all Pope too.
Francis ideas on resignation
Francis said that if he had to resign, he would live in Rome, outside the Vatican, and would be called ” Emeritus bishop of Rome “ rather than the emeritus pope given the The problems that happened With Benedict’s experience as a retired pope. Despite his best efforts, Benedict remained A reference point For the conservatives before his death in 2022, and his house inside the Vatican gardens, a kind of pilgrimage destination for the right.
Francis also wrote a letter of resignationTo invoke if it became medically invalid.
The AP correspondent, Trisha Thomas, reports that Pope Francis has resumed a job because thousands of people pray for his recovery.
Speculations on a possible resignation have swirled since Francis was hospitalized, but the Vatican hierarchy won. Parolin himself told Corriere Della will be during the weekend that this speculation was “useless” and that what counted was Francis’ health.
In addition to the public with Parolin, the Vatican published Francis’ message for Lent, the period leading to Easter. And Francis has appointed a handful of new bishops for Brazil, a new archbishop for Vancouver and modified the law for the state of the city of the Vatican to create a new hierarchy.
Many, if not all, these decisions were probably in progress for a while and the message of Lent was signed before being hospitalized. But the Vatican said that Francis had done work at the hospital, including the signing of the documents.
The doctors said that the state of the Argentinian pope, which had been part of a lung withdrawn as a young man, is touch and go-go, given his age, his fragility and his preexisting pulmonary disease before Pneumonia does not settle down.
Allies and ordinary faithful full of hope
Francis’ right -wing detractors have spread disastrous rumors about his condition, but his allies encouraged him and expressed the hope he will pass. Many have noted that since the very night of his election as a pope, François had asked for the prayers of the ordinary faithful, a request that he repeats daily.
“I am a witness to everything he has done for the Church, with a great love of Jesus,” the Hondurian Cardinal óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga told Repubblica. “Humant speaking, I don’t think it’s time for him to go to paradise.”
In Gemelli on a rainy Tuesday morning, the Romans and ordinary visitors also prayed for the Pope. Hoang Phuc Nguyen, who lives in Canada but visited Rome to participate in a pilgrimage of the holy year, took the time to come to Gemelli to say a special prayer for the pope at the Statue of Saint-Jean-Paul II outside of the main entrance.
“We have heard that he was in the hospital right now and we are very worried about his health,” said Nguyen. “He is our father and he is our responsibility to pray for him.”
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