In the days which followed on February 6 that the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had bronchitis and restrict his activities at his residence, he carried out several private audiences per day with groups of nuns, pilgrims and chiefs of Foundations.
On February 9, he chaired a External mass on Saint-Pierre squareWhere the wind was so strong that it blew its white zucchini from its head. He could not finish his homily, pass him to an assistant and say: “I find it difficult to breathe.”
Three days later, to his Wednesday weekly audienceThe sick pope made his speech read. But then, he shakes the hand of dozens of prelates, many leaning to whisper the greetings, and took photos with Spanish loyal military recruits and nuns of Mother Teresa.
Two days after that, Francis was transported urgently to hospital, with what doctors said they were a complex medical condition that has evolved into pneumonia in his two lungs.
Many of those who knew him said in interviews that Francis, motivated by a feeling of mission and a discipline born from his early training, has mainly worked in the hospital.
It is now bedridden after weeks of ceremonies and audiences – both private and public – which only intensified with the start of December of the 2025 jubilee, a year of faith, penance and forgiveness of sins that do not It takes place only each quarter of a century.
But the exhausting calendar of the Pope – who would exhaust anyone, not to mention an 88 -year -old man with a series of health problems – complies with the personality of Francis and with his vision of the papacy, say doctors, biographers and Vatican observers.
“The pope cares a lot about the church, so it is clear that he put the church first,” Dr. Luigi Carbon, the Pope’s personal doctor at the Vatican, said on Friday during a briefing. in the hospital.
Dr. Sergio Alfieri, another of the Pope’s doctors, added that he does not hold back because he is extremely generous, so he tired. “”
Francis became Pope late in life – he was 76 years old – and was determined to get the most out of it because he suspected that, relatively speaking, he would not hold the position for a long time. A year after his papacy, he told journalists that he thought he would be pope for two or three years, then “at the father’s house”.
This prediction was clearly wrong. Instead, he established a calendar – to wake up before 5 years and at his office by 6 to tackle a full day of work – that Nelson Castro, the author of the book “The Health of Papes”, entitled “Crazy”. Last September, Francis made the longest and most complicated trip of his mandate: an 11 days to four countries Tour in the Asia-Pacific region.
“For Francis, it’s all or nothing,” said Austen Ivereigh, Catholic commentator and papal biographer. In the opinion of Francis, it was “an essential dimension of the papacy” that people had constant access to him, and there was no time to be inaccessible for health reasons.
“His main concern is not to prolong his life, his main concern is to exercise the papal ministry in which he believes that he must be exercised, which is 100%,” said Mr. Ivereigh .
“He has a crazy program,” said another biographer, the Argentine journalist, Elisabetta Pique. In addition to his official morning schedule, he has an equally complete parallel program for the afternoon. “He always says that I will have time to rest in the next world,” she said.
Francis had a deeply seated sense of duty which was instilled in him by the boarding school which he frequented as a child, led by the Salms religious congregation, then by the Jesuit order which he joined in 1958, said Fabio Marchese Ragona, Another biographer.
He said that Francis had told him that he had joined the Jesuits “especially for the discipline” and that the maintenance of the commitments had been drilled to him – as did early for meetings.
Carlo Musso, who worked with Francis on “Hope”, an autobiography published last month, noted: “The word he used the most, the exhortation that I remember best, is” forward “. Even when he looked back, it was so that he could move forward. »»
People who know Francis say that he resists a break, even when he should because of sciatica, a bad knee or recurring bronchial misfortunes. As a young man, he had the upper lobe removed from his right lung, and he suffered episodes of flu and bronchitis during the winter months.
“He is so obstinate; It’s a Testardo, ”said Dr. Castro, using the Italian word for Têtu. And the Pope admitted to be “a very difficult patient,” he added.
The pope once told him that he liked to keep his distance from the doctors, Dr. Castro said: “It means he wants to make decisions” about what he can and cannot do.
IVEREIGH said Francis admitted that one of his “big faults” was obstinacy. “He is very strong and does not easily listen to the suggestions that he has reduced things,” he said.
Mr. Musso stressed that a few hours before being transported to the hospital, Francis held the public with the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, the President of CNN and the representatives of a charitable organization that works in Porto Rico. “He has a huge work capacity,” he said.
The Pope does not disappear for the summer holidays, added Mr. Musso. This habit, said Ms. Piqué, is a source of Dam for many Vatican employees. His last vacation took place in 1975, said Francis himself in his autobiography “Hope”.
Jean-Paul II and Pope Benoît XVI were in summer at the Papal residence of Castel Gandolfo, although the first also opted for mountain stays in northern Italy.
Francesco Antonio Grana, Vatican journalist for the newspaper of Rome Daily Il Fatto Daily, said that it had not helped that Francis had surrounded himself with “yes” who was indulging in the Pope.
“This hospitalization could have been avoided” if someone had brakes on the Pope’s schedule, said Grana.
“I prefer a living pope than a pope who died because he has kept a more commitment to his agenda,” he added. “With Donald Trump in the White House, the world needs a living and combative pope.”
The same week he entered the hospital, Francis wrote an open letter to bishops In the United States, criticizing the policy of President Trump of mass deportation of immigrants, and he resisted Trump on issues such as climate change.
Francis’ workload was not only difficult, but also put it in contact with hundreds of people who could potentially transmit diseases, said Massimo Andreoni, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. “So maybe he should be more prudent when he has a cold or a bronchitis and perhaps slow down a little and take care of him a little more,” he added.
There are a few signs that the Pope can be ready to slow down.
Francis was visited the hospital on Wednesday by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy. Report on Reunion, the Journal du Milan Daily, Corriere Della will be Paradis. “
Friday, during a drop in press, Francis’ doctors clearly indicated that they would keep him in the hospital as long as he needed treatment that he could only receive there, rather than bring him home to his residence in Casa Santa Marta.
“We think it’s cautious,” said Dr. Alfieri. “If we had brought him to Santa Marta, he would start working as before, we know it.”
