Pope Francis canceled his schedule for this Friday due to ‘weariness’

Pope Francis, 86, canceled his commitments this Friday due to a feverish state and fatigue, the Vatican reported. “Due to a feverish state, Pope Francis did not receive an audience this morning”declared the spokesman for the Holy See, Matteo Bruni, without specifying what the agenda of the Argentine pontiff was.

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“The pope was tired, he had a very busy day yesterday, he saw a lot of people, he held the meeting of the Scholas Occurrentes school system and wanted to greet everyone. Resistance weakens at some point“, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, number two of the Holy See, later explained, quoted by the Italian agency Agi.

This cancellation of activities comes two months after Pope Francis was hospitalized for three days in Rome, due to pneumonia that he managed to overcome with a treatment based on antibiotics.

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The pontiff confided on Thursday to the Spanish-speaking television Telemundo that the pneumonia was “treated in time”, but that in a few more hours the condition “would have been more serious”. He also recounted that feels “much better” from knee pain that requires him to use a wheelchair or cane.

“I can now walk, the knee has been fixed. There are days that it is more painful, like today, and days that it is not. But it is part of the development,” he completed.

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Returning from Hungary at the end of April, Francis expressed his willingness to continue traveling. He plans to attend the World Youth Days (WYD) in Lisbon from August 2 to 6 and travel to the French city of Marseille in September.

Later, he faces a trip to Mongolia. The state of health of Jorge Bergoglio, elected head of the Catholic Church in 2013, regularly fuels speculation about his eventual resignation.

(You can read: The Pope was close to death: they reveal the severity of his hospitalization)

a fragile health

Despite his advanced age, Francisco maintains a tight rhythm of meetings and receives up to ten people a day on average. The head of the Catholic Church plans to preside over the Pentecost mass and the Regina Coeli prayer from the Vatican on Sunday.

Francisco dedicates the morning hours to the audiences that he grants in the Vatican to representatives of associations, religious groups and heads of state; in the afternoons, he works on his documents or holds private meetings.

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On Thursday he received representatives of the nuns, of the Italian Episcopal Conference and was with a group of young people from the Scholas Occurrentes educational network.

On several occasions, Francis evoked the possibility of resigning, as his predecessor Benedict XVI did in 2013, who died in December 2022. He maintained that it was not a taboo subject, although clarifying that he ruled out taking that step for the moment.

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In July 2021, Francisco remained hospitalized for ten days for a colon operation, which left him “aftermath,” according to what he said.

Because of that, rules out undergoing a new knee surgery, as advised by doctors.

During an interview in January, he revealed that he suffers from diverticulitis, an inflammation of the diverticula, hernias or bags that form in the walls of the digestive system. The pope is constantly monitored by a team of nurses, both in the Vatican and during his trips.

A necessary measure due to his medical history, which began at the age of 21 when he underwent partial ablation of the right lung due to acute pleurisy.

AFP SCHEDULE