After another scare -a second hospitalization in two months, for an abdominal operation-, the Pope Francisco, 86 years old, is already at home, in Santa Marta. And he has a lot of unfinished business at the Vatican.
(Keep reading: Pope Francis is discharged after 9 days after abdominal surgery)
How he will cope with them after the operation remains to be seen. Jorge Bergoglio is a complicated patient, who does not take care of himself, difficult to keep still and the doctors urged him to try to limit any effort that may compromise healing from abdominal surgery.
(You can read: Pope Francis prays the Angelus in private for the first time in his entire pontificate)
“The concern I have is that he has a good recovery: that he and those around him this first month limit their commitments a bit, not in general, but those that are burdensome due to what could be the tension in the abdominal wall”, admitted Sergio Alfieri, the surgeon who operated on him twice -the latter and when he had a colon intervention, in July 2021-, in an interview with Vatican News about the Pope’s health.
The Pope will now be able to do everything, stronger and better than before.
“The Pope will now be able to do everything, stronger and better than before,” said the specialist, who added that “the Holy Father, compared to other 86-year-old contemporaries, has a perfect heart.” “He has blood tests that many fifty-year-olds would envy because he doesn’t have a parameter out of place, not a single one. It has the vital organs, which we take into account in patients when we have to assess criticality or not, healthy. His heart is healthy, he has never had any problems, his kidneys work very well, his lungs work well,” he added.
(In context: The pope is fine and has already expressed a desire to resume his work, according to the Vatican)
The international agenda
In this context, beyond his reappearance this Sunday for the Marian prayer of the Angelus, from the window of his office in the Apostolic Palace, the Press Office of the Holy See made it known that the general audience for this Wednesday was canceled “to safeguard the post-operative recovery of the Holy Father”.
However, this Monday he will resume audiences with heads of state and government from around the world, as well as with high prelates and nuncios (Vatican ambassadors), with an agenda again quite dense, although less than before and a bit “lightened”, since, according to what LA NACION learned, some considered non-urgent were canceled.
(You can read: What is an incisional hernia and why should Pope Francis have an operation?)
He is expected to receive on Tuesday the President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz Canel, and on Wednesday afternoon, the Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has already been to the Vatican and with whom he had recently spoken on the phone about one of the issues The Pope is most concerned about: how to stop the war in Ukraine.
That same argument and exchange of information about the conflict will surely affect Díaz Canel, given his closeness to the Kremlin. Lula could also talk to the Pope about a visit to Brazil in the event of the long-awaited trip to Argentina next year.
Also linked to Ukraine, The second and most difficult stage of the mission of Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna and President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, is expected: the visit to Moscow. Zuppi has already been in kyiv, where he was received by Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky and the big question is whether his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, will do the same. Francis follows this “dossier” with great attention.
(Keep reading: These were the words of Pope Francis before emergency surgery)
Changes in the Church
It is also expected that Francis will soon decide, from a list of 140 people, the future 70 non-bishop members of the synod on synodality -a term that means walking together-, which will begin next October and which is his great bet to reform the Church in this way. pontificate phase. Among these 70 non-bishop members, 50% must be women, a revolutionary novelty because, in addition, they will be able to vote.
His heart is healthy, he has never had any problems, his kidneys work very well, his lungs work well.
In addition to these 70 non-bishop members, andhe ex-archbishop of Buenos Aires also has to make known the members that he chooses directly, that is, the “pontifical appointments”.
(Also read: Who is Pope Francis’ envoy to Ukraine to promote the end of the war?)
On the other hand, changes are also expected in the curia, the central administration of the Church, including the appointment of the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the most important “ministries” of the Holy See, which he will replace the Spanish Jesuit Luis Ladaria, who will turn 80 next April.
On June 29, the feast of the apostles Saint Peter and Paul, patron saints of Rome, Francis will preside over the holy mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica, with the traditional rite of blessing the palliums -the white stole, symbol of the shepherds- , alongside newly appointed metropolitan archbishops around the world. The brand new Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Monsignor Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva, 55, successor to Cardinal Mario Poli, and the brand new Archbishop of Madrid, José Cobo Cano, 56, who was already auxiliary bishop, who will succeed are expected to attend. Cardinal Mario Osoro at the head of the most important diocese in Spain.
(Also: Pope Francis will visit Mongolia in August, where 2% of the population is Christian)
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A group of people pray outside the Gemelli hospital where the Pope was hospitalized.
These are, in a certain sense, “parallel” appointments, very similar, which stirred up the local hornet’s nest since they were unexpected and, in a certain way, resisted by the most conservative sectors. In both cases, they are young priests, who have at least two decades of government ahead of them, with the same vision of the Church as Francis and open to all. Both García Cuerva and Cobo Cano could receive the mortarboard in the next consistory that could take place at the end of the year or next year and join the group of cardinal electors, that is, those under 80 years of age.
(Also read: Ortega tightens siege on the Catholic Church in Nicaragua)
In this sense, since the first of June, according to the calculations of the Vaticanists, the cardinals appointed by the Pope since the beginning of his pontificate represent two thirds of the total, that is, the quorum necessary to elect a Pope in an eventual conclave. The mathematical quota is equivalent to 81 cardinal electors out of 121, which was reached on the 81st birthday of the archbishop emeritus of Naples, Crescenzio Sepe. Of the other 40 electors, nine were appointed by John Paul II and 31 by Benedict XVI.
In July, the Pope, as usually happens and in this case, given the recent abdominal operation, more than ever, He will take his month of “vacation”, in which he suspends private and general hearings. Thus, he will be able to prepare for his next two confirmed trips, to Portugal for World Youth Day, at the beginning of August, and to Mongolia, a country bordering China and Russia, never trodden on by a Pontiff, at the end of that same month.
ELISABETTA PIQUE
THE NATION (ARGENTINA) / GDA
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