Pope Francis already made his first joke shortly after waking up from the general anesthesia to which he underwent emergency surgery yesterday for an abdominal hernia to prevent an intestinal obstruction. The Pontiff was operated “successfully” at the Gemelli Polyclinic hospital, reported the spokesman of the Holy See, Matteo Bruni, after a three-hour intervention that was decided this Tuesday, after the Pontiff felt strong pain for months.
“The first thing is that the Pope is fine, I think this is the news we were all waiting for. He is fine, awake, conscious and he already made a joke ten minutes ago,” said the surgeon, Sergio Alfieri, the same doctor who operated on him in 2021 to remove 33 centimeters of his colon due to diverticula. Now Pope Francis will need between five and seven days to fully recover, although due to his age – 86 years – and having undergone other interventions in the past, his doctors want to opt for caution. As a precaution, the Prefecture of the Pontifical House, which manages its agenda, has canceled its hearings until June 18.
Alfieri stressed that the Argentine Pope does not suffer from other diseases and wanted to clarify “once and for all” that he is completely cured of the operation in July 2021, and that it was for a “benign disease”. “He will have to undergo a post-operative procedure, but once he is discharged he will not leave a trace or a concern”, maintained the doctor, who said that he will be able to resume his activity normally and has only recommended that he avoid making great efforts. “He looked at me as if saying: ‘I am the Pope. I don’t lift weights,’†Alfieri joked.
On this occasion, the doctor wanted to testify in front of the press – it is the first time that something like this has happened in this pontificate – to explain that they decided to operate on him in agreement with Pope Francis and his personal doctor after the last months showed painful and increasingly frequent symptoms due to an abdominal incisional hernia that was surely the result of other operations performed in the past, such as a peritonitis for which he was cured in Argentina, which would have left scars on his intestine . Yesterday he underwent a laparotomy that “released” these internal scars and this prevents him from suffering an obstruction in the future.
The operation took place a day after the Pope went in his private car to the Gemelli Polyclinic to undergo some tests, including a CT scan, after which the doctors decided it was time to operate. He is now resting in the apartment reserved for the popes on the tenth floor of this hospital, the same one where he spent three nights admitted at the end of March for acute pneumonia that was treated with antibiotics. It was also here that he recovered from colon surgery in 2021, which required a longer post-op and was discharged after ten days. The Pope reacted well to general anesthesia and when he woke up he displayed his usual sense of humor. “When do we do the third?”, he asked his doctor, with irony.
When he just celebrated the ten years of his pontificate, the health of the Argentine Pope is increasingly in the spotlight, since he also needs the help of a cane or a wheelchair to move around his knee problems. However, he shows no signs of slowing down. Just before going to the hospital for surgery, he did his Wednesday general audience as normal, and he has two trips planned this summer. The first, at the beginning of August, when he will go to the World Youth Days in Lisbon. And the second, at the beginning of September in Mongolia, which will be the first apostolic trip of a Pope to this country with just 1,500 Catholics.
