The Vatican has given an update on Pope Francis as the 88-year-old remains in hospital with pneumonia.
He has been undergoing treatment at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, where he was admitted on February 14 after struggling with breathing difficulties.
However, further examination revealed that he had pneumonia in both lungs.
In an early morning update given today, the shortest since he was admitted, the Vatican said ‘Pope Francis rested well’.
The pontiff’s doctors said on Friday there was no imminent risk to his life but that he was ‘not out of danger’.
Doctor Sergio Alfieri told reporters yesterday that the pontiff’s condition has been slightly improving, allowing doctors to lower the amount of medication he takes incrementally.
His hospitalisation has cast doubt over Francis’s ability to continue as head of the world’s almost 1.4 billion Catholics.
But Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin dismissed this as ‘useless speculation’ in an interview published today with Italy‘s Corriere della Sera daily.
His doctor revealed today that although his condition is not life-threatening, Francis will remain in hospital ‘at least all next week’
A nun prays at a statue of Pope St. John Paul II outside Gemelli University Hospital, where Pope Francis is hospitalized for bronchitis treatment
Sergio Alfieri speaks during a press conference at the Gemelli Hospital, where Pope Francis has been admitted for treatment
‘Now we are thinking about the health of the Holy Father, his recovery, his return to the Vatican: these are the only things that matter,’ the cardinal said.
Parolin said he personally had not yet been to see the pope, saying he was available but so far there was no need.
‘It is better if he remains protected and has as few visitors as possible, to allow him to rest and make the treatment he is undergoing more effective,’ he added.
Francis, who is staying in a special papal suite on the 10th floor of the Gemelli hospital, has been moving between his bed, a chair and an adjacent chapel where he prays.
He will remain in hospital ‘at least for all next week’, Alfieri said.
‘If we send him to Santa Marta (his home at the Vatican), he’ll start working again as before,’ he said.
Asked if the pope would be well enough to lead the Angelus prayer from his hospital window this Sunday, Alfieri said ‘the pope will decide’.
The doctor said ‘the real risk in these cases is that the germs pass into the blood’, which could result in sepsis, a life-threatening condition.
Pope Francis, who is being treated in hospital for double pneumonia, is not in danger of death but is not yet cured, his doctor has revealed. Pictured above is the last time the pontiff was photographed, on February 14, 2025
Doctor Luigi Carbone said the pope, who had part of one of his lungs removed as a young man, now has a chronic lung condition and ‘is by definition a fragile patient’.
But Alfieri stressed that ‘at the same time, he has incredible resilience – How many others would have endured all these infections with the workload he has?’
He added that Francis has difficulty breathing but was not on any machines and was ‘in good spirits’. He still has the wit of ‘a 70-year-old, maybe a 50-year-old’.
As his hospital stay drags on, some of Francis’ cardinals have begun responding to the obvious question circulating: whether Francis might resign if he becomes irreversibly sick and unable to carry on.
Francis has said he would consider it, after Pope Benedict XVI ‘opened the door’ to popes retiring, but he has shown no signs of stepping down and in fact has asserted recently that the job of pope is for life.
But the question is now in the air, ever since Benedict became the first pope in 600 years to retire when he concluded in 2013 that he didn’t have the physical strength to carry on.
‘Everything is possible,’ said Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, the archbishop of Marseille, France, when asked Thursday.
But there is no indication Francis is in any way incapacitated or is even considering stepping aside. During his hospital stay, he has continued to work, including making bishop appointments.
After a hospital stay in 2021, he bristled when he learned that some clergy were allegedly already preparing for a conclave to elect his successor.
Francis had an acute case of pneumonia in 2023 and is prone to respiratory infections in winter.
Pope Francis in his wheelchair at the Vatican on the day of the Jubilee of the Armed Forces, February 9, 2025
Doctors say pneumonia in such a fragile, elderly patient makes him particularly prone to complications given the difficulty in being able to effectively expel fluid from his lungs. While his heart is strong, Francis isn’t a particularly healthy 88-year-old.
He is overweight, is not physically active, uses a wheelchair because of bad knees, had part of one lung removed as a young man, and has admitted to being a not terribly cooperative patient in the past.
Francis has had two longer hospital stays during his nearly 12-year pontificate. He spent 10 days at Gemelli in 2021 when he had 33 centimeters (13 inches) of his colon removed. In 2023, he was admitted for nine days for surgery to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair an abdominal hernia.
As he recovers this time around, the Catholic faithful have been participating in special moments of prayer.
In the Philippines, Asia’s largest Catholic nation, Filipino worshippers held an hourlong prayer at the Manila Cathedral on Friday for the Pope’s rapid recovery.
Other Catholics were urged to pray in their homes and communities for the pontiff, who drew a record crowd of 6 million people when he celebrated Mass in a Manila park in 2015, according to official estimates at the time.
‘The Philippines has a place very close to his heart,’ said the Vatican’s ambassador to Manila, Archbishop Charles John Brown.
