ROME –Β Pope Francis suffered two new episodes of acute respiratory crises Monday and was put back on noninvasive mechanical ventilation, the Vatican said.
Francis had inhaled βcopiousβ amounts of mucus in another setback in what has become a more than two-week battle to overcome a complex respiratory infection and pneumonia.
In a late update, the Vatican said the episodes were caused by a βsignificant accumulationβ of mucus in his lungs and bronchial spasms. βTwo bronchoscopies were performed with the need for aspiration of copious secretions,β the Vatican said.
Francis remained alert, oriented and cooperated with medical personnel. The prognosis remained guarded.
Earlier Monday,Β Pope FrancisΒ issued a new message from the hospital as Vatican officials begged him to let his voice be heard after disappearing from public view for over two weeks as he recovers.
Francis, 88, denounced the βprogressive irrelevanceβ of international organizations to combat war as he remained at Rome’s Gemelli hospital in stable condition. He was up, had breakfast and was receiving therapies after sleeping βwell all night long,” the Vatican said.
The Vatican hasnβt released any photos or videos of Francis since before he entered the hospital on Feb. 14 with a complex lung infection. This has become the longest absence of his 12-year papacy.
The Vatican has provided brief, twice-daily medical updates on his condition, and Francis has begun signing off on documents with βFrom Gemelli Polyclinicβ in an indication that he is up and working.
The Vatican has defended Francisβ decision to recover in peace and out of the public eye. But on Monday one of Francis’ closest friends at the Vatican, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, urged him to let his voice be heard, saying the world needs to hear it.
βWe need men like him who are truly universal and not only one-sided,β Paglia said, speaking after a press conference to launch the annual assembly of his Pontifical Academy for Life,Β the Vaticanβs bioethics academy, which has as this year’s theme βThe End of the World?β
Francis wrote a message to the assembly, dated Feb. 26, in which he lamented that international organizations are increasingly ineffective to combat the threats facing the world and are being undermined by βshort-sighted attitudes concerned with protecting particular and national interests.β
Itβs a theme he has articulated before. Francis also has repeatedly called for peace between Russia and Ukraine while trying to maintain the Vaticanβs traditional diplomatic neutrality, and has tried to achieve a similar balancing act for Israelβs war with Hamas in Gaza.
Even a Vatican ambassador not especially close to Francis, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, said the faithful needed to hear his voice at a time when war is raging in Europe. Gaenswein was Pope Benedict XVIβs longtime secretary, and Francis exiled him to be the Vatican ambassador in the Baltics after he published a memoir in 2023 that was critical of Francis.
βPope Francisβ voice is of vital importance for all the world because heβs the only authority who speaks of peace, who condemns war, all the wars under way starting with Ukraine,” La Repubblica quoted Gaenswein as saying.
Francis’ 17-night hospitalization is by no means reaching the papal record that was set during St. John Paul IIβs numerous lengthy hospitalizations over a quarter century.
