Vatican City — Pope Francis was in a “good and stable” condition Monday but was receiving antibiotics intravenously and would limit his activities for a number of days to regain strength and fight off a lung inflammation, the Vatican said. The pope, who will turn 87 on Dec. 17, revealed the inflammation on Sunday but said he would still travel later this week to Dubai to deal with the climate change conference.
Francis skipped his weekly Sunday appearance at a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square a day after the Vatican said he was affected by a light flu. Instead, Francis gave the standard noon blessing in an appearance televised live from the chapel within the Vatican hotel where he lives.
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“Brothers and sisters, blissful Sunday. Today I cannot appear on the window because I actually have this problem of inflammation of the lungs,” Francis said. The pontiff added that a priest, sitting beside him, would read out his day’s reflections for him.
In those comments, Francis said he was going to the United Arab Emirates for the COP28 gathering on climate change and that he would deliver his speech, as scheduled, on Saturday to the participants.
“Besides war, our world is threatened by one other great peril, that of climate change, which puts in danger life on Earth, especially for future generations,” the pontiff said within the words read by the priest.
“I thank all who will accompany this voyage with prayer and with the commitment to take to heart the safeguarding of the common house,” the pontiff said, using his term for Earth.
Not immediately explained was the discrepancy between the pope saying he has lung inflammation and the Vatican saying a day earlier that Francis had a CT scan at a Rome hospital “to exclude the chance of pulmonary complications” and that the exam was negative.
In the spring of this yr, Francis was hospitalized for 3 days for what he later said was pneumonia and what the Vatican described as a case of bronchitis necessitating treatment with intravenous antibiotics.
In June he spent one other nine days in a hospital for surgery to have a hernia repaired and take away painful scarring.
This weekend has been very windy and unusually chilly for late autumn in Rome.
The pontiff’s voice dipped low, and at times he seemed almost breathless in his transient introductory remarks explaining why he didn’t make the window appearance, and at the tip when he added his usual request to “do not forget to wish for me.”
