Pope Francis will return this Wednesday to the Policlinico Gemelli hospital in Rome to undergo general anesthesia and an operation this afternoon due to the risk of intestinal obstruction. The Pontiff will be admitted to the Roman health center for several days, the Vatican foresees.
According to a statement from the Holy See spokesman, Matteo Bruni, the Pontiff will undergo “a surgical intervention of laparotomy and plastic surgery of the abdominal wall with prosthesis.” It is an operation that consists of an incision in the wall of the abdomen to reshape the tissue of the intestine and resolve a hernia that causes severe pain and the risk of obstruction, an operation that is simple in principle but, however, will involve several days of recovery in the hospital.
“The operation, arranged in recent days by the medical team assisting the Holy Father, has been deemed necessary because of an incarcerated incisional hernia that is causing recurrent, painful, and worsening subocclusive syndromes,” the Vatican explained.
Francisco’s admission occurs one day after he went to the same hospital on Tuesday to undergo some medical tests. He spent just an hour undergoing a CT scan, the results have convinced the doctors of the need to carry out a second intervention that follows the colon operation he underwent in July 2021, when 33 centimeters of intestine were removed and he spent ten days entered.
It is the third time that the 86-year-old Argentine pope has entered the Gemelli center in Rome, which has an apartment reserved for the popes. The first was in July 2021, for this colon operation, which was followed by a slow recovery. A few months ago, in an interview with the US agency AP, Francisco revealed that he was suffering from diverticula again, the problem for which he was operated on in the first place. The present hernia may have been formed by this earlier operation. He too was admitted at the end of March, this time for acute pneumonia that was treated with antibiotics and for which he spent three nights in the hospital.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio also has problems walking due to severe knee pain, but he shows no sign of wanting to slow down. The Vatican recently announced a trip to Mongolia between August 31 and September 4, which will be the first visit by a pope to this Asian country with a Buddhist majority and one of the smallest Catholic communities in the world, with only about 1,500 faithful. In August he also plans to attend the World Youth Days to be held in Lisbon. This morning, before going to the hospital, he normally held the usual general audience on Wednesdays in the Vatican, where he asked to pray for the end of the wars in the world, especially the one in Ukraine.
