POPE FRANCIS WILL remain in hospital for at least another week,doctors have announced.
Speaking to reporters in Rome this evening, one doctor treating the pontiff said Francis is “not out of danger”.
Dr Sergio Alfieri said the Pope’s condition is slightly better than before, following his diagnosis of pneumonia in both lungs. Widespread alarm was sparked after the announcement given he had part of his right lung removed when he was 21.
The 88-year-old was admitted to Gemeilli hospital in Rome, Italy with bronchitis this week. Dr Alfieri said today he has been sitting up in bed, and making jokes.
Despite this illness, Francis has continued to work.
He spent 20 minutes with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday, has been in contact with the only Catholic parish in Gaza, and “went about his work with his closest collaborators” yesterday morning.
“The night went well, this morning Pope Francis got up and had breakfast,” the Vatican said in a regular morning update today.
Speaking this evening, Dr Alfieri said: “If we send him to Santa Marta (his home at the Vatican), he’ll start working again as before. So we’re keeping him here. Right now, he’s in the hospital, at least for all next week.
“We’re keeping him here so that when he goes back to Santa Marta, it’ll be harder for him to overdo it,” he added.
Vatican sources have said the pope continues to keep up with his correspondence and has been working with his collaborators.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, the head of Italy’s bishops conference, expressed confidence yesterday that the pope was “on the right path”.
“The fact that the pope had breakfast, read the newspapers, received people, means that we are on the right path to a full recovery, which we hope will happen soon,” Zuppi said.
In his newly published memoir, Hope, Francis remarked that “each time a pope takes ill, the winds of a conclave always feel as if they are blowing”.
While Francis said the “reality is that even during the days of surgery I never thought of resigning”, he acknowledged that resigning is “always a possibility” and that should he resign, he would “remain in Rome, as emeritus bishop”.
He further writes in his memoir that “the reality is, quite simply, that I am old”. Francis also revealed that he “had the feeling” that his papacy would be “brief, no more than three or four years”.
“I never imagined that I would have made all those journeys to more than sixty countries,” he wrote.
He also revealed that he will not be buried in St Peter’s Basilica, writing: “The Vatican is the home of my last service, not my eternal home.”
He also described the funeral service planned for him as “excessive” and has “arranged with the master of ceremonies to lighten it”.