Rome — Pope Francis fell Thursday and hurt his right arm, the Vatican said, just weeks after one other apparent fall resulted in a nasty bruise on his chin. Francis didn’t break his arm, but a sling was placed on as a precaution, the Vatican spokesman said in a press release
On Dec. 7, the pope whacked his chin on his nightstand in an apparent fall that resulted in a nasty bruise.
The 88-year-old pope, who has battled health problems including long bouts of bronchitis, often has to make use of a wheelchair due to bad knees. He uses a walker or cane when moving around his apartment within the Santa Marta hotel in Vatican City.
The Vatican said that Thursday’s fall also occurred at Santa Marta, and the pope was later seen in audiences together with his right arm in a sling.
Simone Risoluti/Vatican Media/Handout/REUTERS
“This morning, resulting from a fall at Santa Marta House, Pope Francis suffered a contusion to his right forearm, without fracture. The arm was immobilized as a precautionary measure,” the statement said.
Speculation about Francis’ health is a relentless in Vatican circles, especially after Pope Benedict XVI broke 600 years of tradition and resigned from the papacy in 2013. Benedict’s aides have attributed the choice to a nighttime fall that he suffered during a 2012 trip to Mexico, after which he determined he couldn’t sustain with the globe-trotting demands of the papacy.
Francis has said, nonetheless, that he has no plans to resign anytime soon, even when Benedict “opened the door” to the likelihood. In his autobiography “Hope” released this week, Francis said that he hadn’t considered resigning even when he had major intestinal surgery.
Francis had a part of one in every of his lungs removed when he was a young man in Argentina after suffering a severe bout of pneumonia.
