Francis spends 12th anniversary of election in hospital

By CathNews New Zealand

March 14th, 2025

People hold a banner with a greeting in Italian for Pope Francis outside Rome's Gemelli hospital on March 6. The banner says, "Cercola is praying for you. Stay strong, rise and walk”. The phrase "rise and walk" is from the Acts of the Apostles, and Cercola is a town near Naples. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

As he marked the 12th anniversary of his election as the successor of St Peter, Pope Francis remained in a stable condition in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital. Source: Vatican News.

Writing in Vatican News, editorial director Andrea Tornielli noted that “the news coming from the latest medical bulletins is encouraging, his prognosis is no longer guarded, and hopefully he will be able to return to the Vatican soon”.

On March 12, the Holy See Press Office said that “the clinical condition of the Holy Father has remained stable in the context of an overall complex medical picture”.

A chest X-ray performed on March 11 had radiologically confirmed the improvements observed in the previous days.

The Holy Father continues to undergo high-flow oxygen therapy during the day and non-invasive mechanical ventilation during nighttime rest.

Tornielli wrote that the last 12 months has seen Pope Francis’ longest intercontinental journey (to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, and Singapore); the conclusion of the Synod on Synodality; and the opening of the Holy Door that inaugurated the Jubilee; and now a month in hospital.

“The Successor of St Peter, sick among the sick, suffers and prays for peace, accompanied by the chorus of prayers of so many people around the world,” he wrote.

“He, who in these 12 years has never concluded a meeting, a catechesis or an Angelus without the words, ‘Please do not forget to pray for me’, today feels the embrace of so many believers and non-believers who care deeply for him.”

Tornielli noted that then-Cardinal Bergoglio addressed the General Congregations 12 years ago, quoting Henri De Lubac’s opinion that “the worst evil” the Church can incur is “spiritual worldliness”:

“The danger of a Church that ‘believes she has light of its own’, that counts on her own strength, her own strategies, her own efficiency, and thus ceases to be the ‘mysterium lunae’, that is, no longer reflecting the light of Another, no longer living and acting only by the grace of the One who said: ‘Without me you can do nothing’.”

Tornielli offered thanks for the Pope’s magisterium of fragility, for his “fragile voice that continues to implore peace and not war, dialogue and not oppression, compassion and not indifference”.

FULL STORY

Pope Francis in stable condition, Xray confirms improvements over recent days – Vatican News (Vatican News)

The voice of Pope Francis and the magisterium of fragility – Vatican News (Vatican News)