Top aides hit back against rumors of papal death, resignation

ROME – Several of Pope Francis’s top collaborators have hit back against rumors that Pope Francis’s health, while of concern, is declining as he marks one week in the hospital for treatment of bilateral pneumonia.

Speaking to Italian television network RAI, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna and president of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), said, “We are all worried about the pope, but the things that are said are exactly what’s happening.”

“The fact that the pope had breakfast, read the newspapers, and received people means that we are on the path to a full recovery, which we hope will happen soon,” Zuppi said.

His comments come amid a frenzy of concern over the health of Pope Francis, 88, who was hospitalized Feb. 14 for treatment of bronchitis. He was later diagnosed with a polymicrobial respiratory infection, and then bilateral pneumonia, with his treatment plan being altered multiple times.

Given his age and medical history, Francis is particularly vulnerable to respiratory illness, having had part of one lung removed due to a serious bout of pneumonia as a young Jesuit. He also suffers from chronic sciatica, a crippling nerve condition that has recently forced him to use a wheelchair or a cane.

The pope has suffered from bronchitis and respiratory infections with increased frequency in the past two years, and has experienced two falls in recent months, injuring his chin and then his arm.

However, a Vatican statement Wednesday evening said that while his condition is still serious, Pope Francis’s blood tests had shown a “slight improvement” of inflammatory markers, and a subsequent statement on Thursday night said his general clinical status had “slightly improved.”

So far, the pope has spent his days at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital alternating between reading, prayer, work, and rest, with the Vatican saying he has also met with his closest collaborators, though without providing names.

On Wednesday he also received a private visit from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who in a statement afterward said, “I am very happy to have found him alert and responsive. We joked as always. He has not lost his proverbial sense of humor.”

She later said the pope had jested about “some outside who prayed for me to go to paradise, but the Lord of the Harvest thought of leaving me here still.”

Vatican sources in recent days have said that despite his complex condition, the pope has been sitting up in a chair, has been breathing on his own, and that his heart is in good condition.

He has apparently also been instructed to “not take even the slightest draft” of fresh air as he recovers, and as temperatures this week have dipped.

These Vatican sources have said that “fake news speaks for itself” regarding the pope’s health, and that accurate information “is given regularly.”

Speaking from the Non Stop Music event in Italy, Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, prefect emeritus of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture, said of the pope’s health, “we are seeing a subtle recovery.”

“Considering an organism that has been used to fighting for a long time, we can say that its entire life has almost always been in tension,” he said, referring to the pope and his early battle with the illness that claimed part of one lung.

“It is therefore a strong organism,” he said, saying updated information will be given “minute by minute in a situation that remains complex.”

However, Ravasi said “it is not a critical situation, as some media have suspected,” he said.

Ravasi admitted that given the pope’s age, “there was apprehension” about the pope’s condition, especially after the diagnosis of bilateral pneumonia, however, “it seems that now the general orientation is more positive, considering an overall strong physical structure.”

“That moment of concern is natural, but it was also emphasized in a particular way,” he said, saying he has been asked by reporters if the pope had returned to his Vatican residence in a coffin, and has denied those rumors, saying, “everything is normal.”

Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant’Egidio Community, which is dedicated to social works and is appreciated by Pope Francis, also hit back against rumors of a potential papal resignation in light of this most recent health scare.

“I don’t see why we should talk about resignation,” Riccardi told Italian media, recalling how once a priest had written to Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, the former archbishop of Milan, saying that ‘in these times the crows are flying back to Rome.’”

Riccardi said that in his view there is “a certain obsession with the pope’s health, a game of voices, many improvising as analysts of the pope’s health, always wanting to discover a pessimistic note.”

“The crows are flying back,” he said, saying he personally sympathizes with the pope, who he said, “deserves solidarity, but also respect for his health and his body.”

In terms of the media narrative about a pope who is declining and is currently at death’s door, Riccardi said, “there are journalistic crows” who are peddling the narrative.

Pope Francis could decide to resign in light of this latest health crisis, he said, “but it doesn’t seem to me that the condition is compromised. I don’t see why we should talk about resignation.”

“I would say that the resignation is a bit of an obsession that is also returning because this is a pontificate born of the resignation of Benedict XVI,” he said, saying, “my feeling is that Francis wants to continue his ministry as long as he has the strength to continue it, and we are not at that moment.”

Follow Elise Ann Allen on X: @eliseannallen