Pope Francis’ complex lung infection is not immediately life-threatening, his doctors said Friday, from the Rome hospital in which he has been treated for the past week, but they warned he is “not out of danger.”
The 88-year-old pontiff, who had part of a lung removed in his youth, would remain in the hospital for at least another week, his doctors told reporters. Francis, they said, had been prescribed “many drugs” to treat a bronchial infection that had developed into double pneumonia, but he was not on a respirator.
The doctors said the pope was in a “good mood” and had even cracked jokes earlier in the day, but his condition remained critical.
“I know I am an older man, that I have a chronic problem,” the pope told his surgeon, Sergio Alfieri, who shared the conversation with reporters gathered at Policlinico Agostino Gemelli, the hospital where Francis is being treated.
“The situation at my age is grave,” the pope said, according to Dr. Alfieri. The pope, his doctor said, understood the risk of death at his age, and told him “all doors were open.”
Dr. Alfieri said the pope is “not out of danger” and described what he called an “important infection,” which had not entered the bloodstream, a life-threatening condition known as sepsis.
As the pope’s hospital stay enters a second week, questions have grown about the future of the Roman Catholic Church, whether Francis — the spiritual leader of almost 1.4 billion Catholics —passes away or whether he manages to fight his infection but emerges physically diminished. The damage to his lungs was already chronic, and in recent days a few cardinals have openly spoken about the possibility of Francis resigning, as his predecessor Benedict XVI did in 2013.
Calibrating the right treatment involved many factors, Dr. Alfieri said. “Our job is not easy.”
The pope’s medical doctor at the Vatican, Luigi Carbone, noted that Francis was, after all, 88, and that it would take time for him to recover. It would not take much for the situation to become “unbalanced,” he said.
Dr. Alfieri said Francis was fragile but tough and Dr. Carbone said Francis was not one to give up.
Dr. Alfieri said that on Friday evening the pope had left his room to go pray at a chapel in his suite at the hospital.
