The Pope looms so great in everyday Italian life that there are many expressions that even cause a dark event like his death.
“A Pope dies, they do another,” says one, suggesting how life is going.
“Every death of a Pope …” Another begins, indicating a rare occurrence.
But the one that is heard most frequently when a Pope is really sick is perhaps the darkest: “The Pope is fine until he is dead.”
Who has been doing rounds like Pope Francis approaches a week In the Gemelli hospital in Rome, fighting against pneumonia and complex respiratory infection.
While the Vatican has been providing updates twice a day on his condition and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni He said that “they joked as usual” during their visit on Wednesday, all kinds of reports, true and no, abound about Francis's health.
They have claimed their own life in an era of chat groups, conspiracy theories and Internet memes, not to mention the Perennial Roman fixation in the Pope and who could happen.
He Conclave effect
It does not help the Oscar nominated film Conclave It is in theaters and has made everyone an expert in the arcane rules and the spectacular drama involved in a papal choice.
Or that Francis recently extended the term of the Dean of the Cardinals College instead of finding someone new to fill a key job during the next papal transition.
Or that at 88, he is one of the oldest potatoes in history.
Francis still has a way to go to survive Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903 at age 93. But he is on his way to match or overcome Pope Gregory XII, perhaps better known for being the most recent Pope to resign until BENEDICT XVI PAPA He did it in 2013.
Gregory was 88 years old when he resigned in 1415 to end the West Schism, according to the Catholic hierarchy of online resources.
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Francis has frequently said that he would also consider giving up if his health made him unable to continue, although more recently he said that a Pope's work is for life.
The candles with the photos of Pope Francis are those placed under the statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Agostino Gemelli Policinic in Rome, Wednesday, February 19, 2025, where the Pontiff is hospitalized since Friday, February 14.
Gregorio Borgia/ The Associated Press
Vatican's correspondents are generally preparing for the next papal trips at this time of year, but none are confirmed so far. On the other hand, between medical updates, they are preparing stories that look back in their life, just in case.
“I think the opinion of 'A Pope is fine until it is dead' is always true,” said Giovanni Maria Vian, former editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Essservatore Romano, who knows how Vatican's information is managed.
“It is a very Roman way of speaking that represents, on the one hand, the traditional skepticism of the Romans and Italians, but on the other hand, an informative opacity.”
The Vatican has not allowed any member of the Francis medical team to appear in the camera or give detailed updates about his health, and photos of him have not been published since his hospitalization of February 14.
A papal video combines rumors
But to understand how intertwined the Pope is in Italian life, one only needs to consider another religiously observed by the Italians: the annual festival of the Sanremo song, a one -week series about RAI television in which viewers vote for their vocalists promotion favorites that act night at the Kitschy, Sometimes the obscene contest.
When it was broadcast last week, it appeared even more in the headlines of the usual because Francis, who is already sick of bronchitis but not yet in the hospital, appeared on the opening night in a video prior to the recording, an advertising blow for Sanremo and the first for the papacy.
When the popular Italian Blog Dagospia later said that the video had been carried out almost one year earlier for another event, almost hysteria between the Vatican observers.
The apparent deception suggested that Francis's last disease was much worse than it seemed, and asked questions about the papacy's strength if an old video had been released without his knowledge.
It turns out that Dagospia was wrong. The video was legitimate, recent and recorded for Sanremo. But it was true that Francis's bronchitis was much worse.
At the end of the week, he was hospitalized with a lung infection That became pneumonia.
The episode, although it stressed the truth that the papacy is a matter of General public knowledgeThe interest and debate here, and to speculate on the current health of the Pope and who could be the next is a national hobby.
“I am certainly very, very worried,” said Maurizio Di Folco, who was being treated on Tuesday at the same hospital. “I wish him a rapid recovery and pray for him deeply. A very good pope. A great Pope!
“We hope it will be with us for a long time.”
The conservative critics of Francis weigh
But in other places, Francis's right -wing critics are alarmist stories and totally without corroborating about his condition.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a nemesis of Francisco who was excommunicated by the Schism last year, revived his conspiracy on the legitimacy of Francis's elections for 2013, asking the CIA to investigate what he affirms that it was a plan of ” Deep state “to choose it.
Francis knows this dynamic well.
“Some loved me dead” He told Slovaks to the Jesuit priests in 2021, referring to what he learned while he was hospitalized that year by intestinal surgery.
“I know that there were even meetings among the priests who thought the Pope was worse than what was said. They were preparing the conclave. “
It is considered a bad taste to publicly discuss who is up or down in the papal bets of a future conclave, much less to begin to consign one. But in private, Rome is full of such conversations. Taxi drivers talk about it with passengers, doctors with patients, butchers with customers.
For now, Francis clings.
Thursday's bulletin said that his general clinical condition was “to improve slightly” and that his heart worked well. He had breakfast sitting in an armchair and was working with assistants.
“There is a greater measure of transparency, but even that is not complete,” said Christopher Bellitto, a professor of Church History at Kean University in New Jersey.
“Surely everyone with parents and grandparents said: 'That is pneumonia' before the Vatican.”
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press