Pope Hospitalised for Tests, Bronchitis Treatment
Pope Francis, assisted by an aide, rises from his wheelchair to take his seat in the Paul VI Audience Hall for his weekly general audience at the Vatican Feb. 12, 2025. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
By Cindy Wooden, CNS – After suffering from bronchitis for more than a week and having obvious difficulty breathing, the 88-year-old Pope Francis was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14.
“This morning, at the end of his audiences, Pope Francis will be admitted to the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic for some necessary diagnostic tests and to continue, in a hospital setting, treatment for bronchitis that is still ongoing,” the Vatican press office told reporters. The pope was expected to stay in the hospital for several days.
Before leaving the Vatican for the hospital, the pope held private meetings with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and with Mark Thompson, chairman and CEO of CNN, and held a group meeting with members of the Gaudium et Spes Foundation.
The pope, who underwent surgery in 1957 to remove part of one of his lungs after suffering a severe respiratory infection, has been susceptible to colds and bouts of bronchitis.
Beginning with his weekly general audience on Feb. 5, Pope Francis has had an aide read the bulk of his homilies and prepared speeches at public Masses and audiences.
“It is difficult for me to speak,” he explained to visitors at the audience on Feb. 5 before handing off his text.
At Mass on Feb. 9 for the Jubilee of the Armed Services, Police and Security Personnel, he apologised, saying he was having “difficulty breathing.”
At his general audience on Feb. 12, he apologised for not delivering the main talk himself, saying it was “because I still can’t with my bronchitis. I hope next time I can.”
But on all those public occasions, he took the microphone to urge prayers for peace and to give his blessing.
Also, from Feb. 6 to the morning he entered the hospital, Pope Francis kept his schedule of meetings with individuals and small groups but held the meetings in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, his residence, rather than in the library or ornate halls of the Apostolic Palace.
Pope Francis has been an inpatient at the Gemelli hospital several times.
In March 2023, he was hospitalised for three days for what doctors said was a “respiratory infection.” He tested negative for COVID-19.
He was back on June 7, 2023, when he underwent a three-hour surgery to repair a hernia and spent nine days at the hospital, where St. John Paul II had been hospitalised multiple times. The procedure on Pope Francis, under general anaesthesia, was performed using a surgical mesh to strengthen the repair and prevent the recurrence of a hernia. Surgeons also removed several adhesions or bands of scar tissue that his doctors said had formed after previous surgeries decades ago.
Prior to that, the pope had spent seven days in the hospital in July 2021 after undergoing colon surgery to treat diverticulitis, an inflammation of bulges in the intestine. Pope Francis repeatedly denied that doctors had found cancer during the operation.
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