Valentina di Giorgio
(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 06.22.2023).- On Thursday morning, June 22, Pope Francis received in audience the participants in the 96th Plenary Assembly of the Reunion of Aid Agencies for the Oriental Churches (R.O.A.C.O.) and the Youth Conference. However, he was frank and very clear: he would not give the address he had prepared and explained openly why: “I’m still under the effects of the anaesthesia, my breathing isn’t good.”
The Pope’s words revealed something that had passed to a second plane: the subject of the anaesthesia and also that the convalescence that should be observed by an 86-year-old man has not be completely respected. Suffice it to look at the Holy Father’s agenda from Sunday, the 18th, to Thursday, the 22nd of June. In an interview with Vatican Media the Doctor who operated on the Pontiff said he wasn’t worried about the Pope’s health. “Are you worried about the Pope’s health? No, in the sense that the Holy Father — compared with other 86-year-old men –, has a perfect heart. He has had blood tests that would be the envy of many 50-year-olds as he doesn’t have a single parameter out of place, not one: glycemia, cholesterol, white blood cells. . . He has an excellent haemoglobin level; he has no problem. He has healthy vital organs, which we must take into account in patients when we have to assess criticality or not. His heart is healthy, he’s never had problems, his kidneys work very well, his lungs function well. Occasionally a whistling sound is heard, but remember the additional surgery he had in his youth, the removal of part of the lobe –, so he has less of a lung than others, but he’s always had that . . . that’s not the concern. My concern is that he have a good convalescence: that he and those that surround him this first month limit somewhat his commitments — not in general –, but those that are burdensome, which could cause tension in the abdominal wall.”
Hence, the concern is his convalescence and to that, only the Pope himself can respond.
