After spending five weeks in the hospital, Pope Francis returns to the Vatican. It will appear publicly this Sunday, March 23, for the first time since has been hospitalization.
The essentials:
- The Pope had been hospitalized since February 14 for double pneumonia.
- He will leave his hospital room this March 23 to return to the Vatican, but a convalescence of at least two months awaits him, according to Professor Sergio Alfieri, of the Gemelli Hospital in Rome. “We hope he can quickly resume his normal activities,” said Doctor Luca Carbone.
- Its first public appearance is expected to take place this Sunday.
- Pope Francis is the sovereign pontiff to have had the longest hospitalization just after Pope John Paul II who had hospitalized for 55 days in 1981. No release date is announced by Pope Francis who is still under medical surveillance.
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11:37 – The “very happy” pope to return to the Vatican
When he was released, the Pope was “very happy, he had been asking us for three or four days when he could return,” said Professor Sergio Alfieri at Gemelli Hospital in Rome at a press conference. His state of health “improves” and “we hope that he can quickly resume his normal activities”, said another member of the medical team, Doctor Luca Carbone. He should start a two -month convalescence.
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The state of health of Pope Francis has been stable for several days on Monday March 10, 2025, the date on which doctors decided to “lift the prognosis” which was until then “reserved”. But doctors did not wish to rule on a possible evolution of the prognosis of the 88 -year -old Jesuit wishing to see the same positive results “in the coming days”. Since then, the state of health of Pope Francis does not seem to have deteriorated, on the contrary the Vatican evokes “new improvements”. Pharmacological therapies and physiotherapy are still maintained, as well as the respiratory assistance of the Sovereign Pontiff which tends to decrease.
On March 6, the Sovereign Pontiff had spoke for the first time since his hospitalization. In a chevant and not really reassuring voice, he addressed the faithful: “Thank you with all my heart for the prayers you make for my health from the place (Saint-Pierre de Rome), I accompany you by”, explained the sovereign pontiff. “May God bless you and the Virgin takes care of you,” he continued. “The complexity of the clinical picture and the necessary wait for pharmacological therapies to require the requirement to remain reserved on the prognosis,” said his health bulletin.
Pope Francis has been hospitalized for more than three weeks, but he has been sick for longer. What has been announced as bronchitis has become pneumonia affecting the two lungs. In detail, the Vatican indicates that “polymicrobial infection, which has declared itself against the backdrop of bronchitasis and asthmatic bronchitis, and which required the use of antibiotic therapy based on cortisone, makes therapeutic treatment more complex”. As a reminder, Saturday, February 22, the Pope was also the victim of an breathing asthmatic crisis. He then needed a broadband oxygen supply, as well as blood transfusion.
Pope Francis’s fragile health
Caution remains in view of the fragile health of Pope Francis, 88 years old. Especially since a long hospitalization is not without risk as Margherita de Talle de Torrere sulra indicated on Wednesday: “The most dreaded danger is sepsis, the passage of microorganisms in the blood which propagate to other organs, with very serious consequences”. The Italian newspaper also revealed that the sovereign pontiff should observe two to three weeks of “absolute rest”. In France, the deputy editor-in-chief of the cross and former correspondent to the Vatican, Loup Besmond de Senneville, is also worried about the view of the communication of the Holy See on RTL: “If the Vatican evokes a worrying, complex clinical picture, with words that report real problems, it is clearly the most serious and most concern communications that we have ever seen on hospitalization of Pope Francis”.
In recent years, the octogenarian has multiplied hospitalizations and operations, some of which had been hidden by religious authorities before being revealed by Italian media. The health concerns of the Pope, who appeared, very weakened had then aroused great concern. After consecutive and rather important medical problems, between 2021 and 2023, Pope Francis seems to have escaped new big health problems in recent months. The new hospitalization of the Pope at the beginning of 2025 is worrying, the state of the Pope is to be monitored: in people over 75, acute bronchitis can justify increased medical surveillance, especially when symptoms and inflammation persist beyond 10 days.