Pope Francis turns 12 years of pontificate admitted to the Gemelli

As usual, Vatican’s press office reported that Pope Francis spent a “quiet” night at the Gemelli Polyclinic Hospital in Rome where he has been admitted for almost a month.

“The night has passed quietly,” he said in a brief statement.

For ten days, when he suffered two acute respiratory insufficiency crisis caused by excess mucus in the lungs, the Holy Father has not suffered again this type of episodes.

Another positive sign of its favorable evolution that was also confirmed by the decision of doctors to withdraw the reserved prognosis of their clinical diagnosis.

This Thursday, Pope Francis turns 12 years old, surrounded by the health personnel that attends it uninterruptedly since he was admitted on February 14.

It is the first time that the pontiff spends this hospitalized anniversary. Although bilateral pneumonia is referring, as the results of the TAC to which it underwent on Tuesday, the Holy Father is planned to celebrate it in a special way.

The director of the press office, Matteo Bruni, recalled in statements to the media this Wednesday that Pope Francis had either celebrated this anniversary.

As has done since the spiritual exercises of the Roman curia began, the Pontiff will follow the meditations that at 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. (local time) the preacher of the Pontifical House, Fray Roberto Pasolini, will teach in the presence of all the cardinals, bishops and archbishops who work in the departments of the Holy See in Rome.

Prayer and rest for this anniversary

The plan for today of Pope Francis will be completed with prayer and rest. Until Sunday, despite the disease, he has been working, although in tasks that did not require too much effort. However, this week, the Pontiff has parked his work tasks to devote himself exclusively to the spiritual preparation of this liturgical time of Lent.

Like the rest of the prelates of the Roman curia, it will resume its activity on Saturday, March 15.

In addition, he will combine prayer in the chapel adjacent to his room on the tenth floor of the Gemelli Hospital in Rome with respiratory and motor physiotherapy, and with the antibiotic therapy prescribed by doctors.

This includes continuous use during the day of nostrils of high flow to receive oxygen support, and a mask for ventilation assisted by sleeping at night.

Thanks to these assisted breathing devices 24 hours a day, the Holy Father has not had any respiratory crisis again.

Pope Francis, one of the longest pontiffs

On December 17, Pope Francis turned 88 and became the third longest pontiff in the history of the Catholic Church. They have only surpassed him in age, Leo XIII, who lived up to 93, and Agatón, a Pope of the VII century who reached 102 years.

Health problems have been a constant in the weeks before he was admitted to the hospital with a serious bronchitis that worsened and derived in pneumonia. However, despite the infection of the respiratory tract that left him without voice and without strength he did not want to reduce his agenda. Moreover, the official commitments of December, January and February had a frantic rhythm, with up to 9 public and private meetings in a single day.

The day he was transferred to the GEMELLI Polyclinic Rome hospital, on February 14, the Pontiff fulfilled all those planned for that day.

The Holy Father met with the prefect of the Dicasterio for Evangelization, Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle; with the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, Robert Fico; with the president and general director of the CNN, Mark Thompson; and with members of the “Gaudium et Spes” Foundation to which he even took strength to pronounce a brief speech.

Pope Francis thanked them with just a thread of voice the work they do, “especially in favor of the poorest, following the teachings of the constitution of the Council of which they have taken their name and that honor with their actions.”

Similarly, he pointed out that the strength of the Holy Spirit leads Catholics to “be instruments of God’s love who wants to reach all men, without distinction.”

Guerra in Gaza, at the center of conversations with Fico

Before that, at 9:00 hours (local time) Pope Francis met at the Santa Marta house with the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, Robert Fico, for half an hour.

The political leader was the victim of an attack in May last year when, after a meeting of the Executive in Handlova, he was shot in the chest, stomach and in one leg. An attack that the Pontiff wanted to remember in his speech the diplomatic corps in the Holy See last January, pointing it as a tragic example of the “climate of suspicion” generated by the news that “foster hate.”

The Holy Father presented to the Prime Minister of Slovakia with a work of Terracota entitled “Tenderness and Love” and handed him some of the most important papal documents of his pontificate as the message for the peace of this year. He also gave him the volume “persecuted by the truth, the Ukrainian Greco-Catholics after the steel curtain.”

For his part, Fico gave Pope Francis a bronze work that represents the Saints Cyril and Methodium, Patrons Bishops of Europe whose holiday is celebrated this Friday, February 14, and a wooden painting of a Slovak artist who represents a guardian angel.

Immediately afterwards, the head of the Bratislava government moved to the Vatican Apostolic Palace where he met as usual with the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who was accompanied by the Undersecretary for relations with the states, Monsignor Mirosław Wachowski.

According to the statement of the press office of the Holy See, in this context the “mutual appreciation for solid bilateral relations and the renewed common commitment for social cohesion” was reaffirmed and special attention was paid “to the topic of anthropology and family and educational issues.”

“The international framework was also in depth,” the statement continues, “focusing on persistent instability in Ukraine and peace perspectives, as well as in the fragile truce in Israel and Palestine and the serious humanitarian emergency in Gaza.”

San Juan Pablo II, record of days hospitalized in the Gemelli

The pontiff has been hospitalized for almost a month, the longest of his 12 years of pontificate. However, to date, San Juan Pablo II has been the Pope who has spent more time interned in the Gemelli.

Throughout his pontificate, from 1978 until his death in 2005, San Juan Pablo II admitted nine times to the Gemelli Hospital. In total, he spent 153 days at the hospital.

His longest hospitalization occurred weeks later, from June 20 to August 14, 1981, where he underwent minor surgery and was then treated by a viral infection known as Citomegalovirus. On that occasion, Juan Pablo II was admitted 55 days.