POPE FRANCIS HAS spent another night without incident in hospital, the Vatican said this morning.
Last week, the 88-year-old pontiff was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital with bronchitis, which has since developed into pneumonia in both lungs.
This has sparked widespread alarm given he had part of his right lung cut away when he was 21, after developing pleurisy that almost killed him.
Despite being in hospital, Francis continues 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.
It was the latest in a series of incrementally positive updates this week from the Vatican, which has regularly been publishing information – however modest – about the Argentine pope’s state of health.
The Vatican yesterday said that Francis continued to not have a fever and his “hemodynamic (blood flow) parameters continue to be stable”.
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”.