President met the pontiff and said he expected to find a man weakened because of the surgery he underwent
The president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (EN) said to have stayed “happy” for being received by “a healthy pope” during his meeting with the leader of the Catholic Church, in the Vatican, on Wednesday (June 21, 2023).
“I thought I was going to get here and find a man in a bad state, because he had just had surgery. He was very excited, very smiling”, stated Lula. On June 7, Pope Francis underwent surgery to remove an intestinal hernia. He was admitted to a hospital in Rome until June 16.
“Every day I say in Brazil that I am a 77-year-old with the energy of 30 [anos]. The pope yesterday was a pope with an energy of 30. He was very motivated and very willing to continue his fight, both against inequality and to build peace on planet Earth”, completed the petista in a speech on the morning of this Thursday (June 22, 2023), in Rome, Italy.
In Lula’s assessment, “Pope Francis is today the most important political authority on planet Earth. Not only what he represents, but his posture, what he says”.
The petista has been in Europe since Tuesday (June 20). He has already met with the president of Italy, Sérgio Mattarella, with the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and with the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, among other authorities. He heads to Paris this Friday morning (June 22).
Read Lula’s agenda in France:
- 6:40 am (Brasília time; 11:40 am in Paris) – arrival in Paris;
- 8:30 am – lunch with the president of the Brics bank, former president Dilma Rousseff;
- 10:30 am – meeting with the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa;
- 11:30 am – meeting with the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez;
- 12:30 pm – meeting with the Prime Minister of Haiti, Ariel Henry;
- 1:15 pm – meeting with the president of COP-28 in the United Arab Emirates, Sultan al Jaber;
- 3:15 pm – speech at the Power Our Planet event;
- 4pm – dinner hosted by the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte Macron, to the heads of delegations at the Summit for a New Global Financial Compact and their spouses.
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