And the Pope’s health? Doubts, speculations and the ghost of resignation

Pope Francis had to suspend his early July trip to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa on Friday, due to walking problems due to the condition of his right knee. He had done the same before with the visit to Lebanon and you may also need to postpone your trip to Canada scheduled for the end of next month.

The trips “to the existential frontiers of the Church” are very important for the popes and for this reason, in addition to the need to wander around the Vatican in a wheelchair and be replaced in the most important religious celebrations, they have revived the versions on Francis’ resignation.

What’s the situation? The Argentine pontiff shows a good state of health, apart from osteoarthritis of the knee, sciatica and the situation of the right hip, which together represent an important and difficult issue.

Since the “vice-pope” does not exist in the Catholic religion and his power structure is super-centralized in an absolute monarch who suffers from overwork, a badly treated knee is enough to revive the question of the resignation of a pontiff who will fulfill 86 years of age on 17 December.

Francisco does not want to operate

All the more so since none of the nearly three hundred Italian bishops who met him to elect the new president of the episcopal assembly of Italy on 23 and 24 May, of which the Pope is the natural head as bishop of Rome, has so far denied a suggestive version .

The Pope reported to them in a secret meeting the problems of pilgrimage that elhe said he doesn’t want to be operated on. Almost a year ago, on July 4, 2021, he was operated on for three hours for diverticulosis which forced him thirty-three centimeters of his large intestine. Francis told the bishops that after the surgery he had suffered from “discomfort” caused by anesthesia.

He did not clarify if these “troubles” were serious and how long they lasted, but he gave them a bombshell: “Before being operated on, I resign!” A Vatican source tried to debunk the announcement and said the phrase was intended as a joke.

at that point it was inevitable that speculations would be revived.

In Jorge Bergoglio’s health information treatment, the Lack of clarity. When he was operated on on July 4 of last year at Gemelli, the surgeons who operated on him did not give any news through the usual Medical Bulletin during the nine days of hospitalization. The Vatican press room was replaced and provided daily information.

silence from the Vatican

Now there is the reluctance with the physical problems in the right leg. Doctors are known to be in favor of knee surgery. There is no official information, only transcended. The Pope said he does not want to be operated on due to anesthesia and the post-operative rehabilitation period. But not even this is public information, but the result of versions and reports that end up being official in the absence of an abrupt denial or confirmation from the Vatican.

Above all, the “I resign!” that Bergoglio would have said as an alternative to those who want to force him to undergo surgery.

No one has confirmed the declaration, but it undoubtedly comes from some bishops of the courageous minority of episcopals of the Italian assembly who were present and released the pontiff’s declaration protected by anonymity. Nobody denied it either.

The theme is disseminated to the four winds by the Italian and world press. The Vatican is silent.

Nobody believes the Pope is about to resign. Leg ailments are a problem because they hinder his daily free movement and have seriously hampered Francis’ travels around the world.

But many repeat it as it was not possible to add it another pope emeritus dressed in white without punishing the image of the Church, while Benedict XVI is still alive, the German pope Joseph Ratzinger, 95, Jorge Bergoglio must not resign.

It is worth remembering that the vacant seat when the Pope has died or resigned is in the Basilica of San Juan de Letrán, seat of the bishop of the city, where the chair of San Pedro, the first bishop of Rome, is located. It is from the Roman ministry that Pope Ratzinger resigned in February 2013. The Pontiff is such because he is Bishop of Rome.

The gesture of Benedict XVI eight centuries after Celestino resigned as pontiff is historic because suddenly modernized the Church on a fundamental question.

The papacy is no longer the same, a pontiff can resign if he does not feel in a position to continue. Ratzinger had turned 85, had health problems and was upset by the infighting in the Roman Curia with the inevitable scandals that Benedict XVI could not control.

The resignation was a liberation for him. His health has improved, so much so that he has lived a decade as pope emeritus, that is, retired, and lives peacefully in a convent in the Vatican gardens accompanied by a group of four nuns and his personal secretary.

To continue with the versions, it is said that Francis, who visits his neighbor Ratzinger from time to time, if he resigned, could go and live as an emeritus in his episcopal see in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano and in the large building of the Vicariate in Rome. But it is only one version.

important ceremonies

The important ceremonies decided by Francis will be concentrated in the month of August. The 27 the Consistory will meet and create 21 new cardinals. Of these, 16 will be electors who will participate in the election of their successor in the next Conclave.

The next day he will go to L’Aquila, one hundred kilometers from Rome, to preside over the ceremonies in honor of Celestine V, the Pope who resigned in 1294. Pope Ratzinger had already visited Celestine’s tomb, affixing the pallium of his pontificate to him. , a gesture then considered premonitory of Benedict XVI’s resignation almost 400 years later.

On 29 and 30 August, having returned to Rome, the Pope will examine with the cardinals present at the Consistory the Apostolic Constitution “Preach the Gospel” which contains the reorganization of the Roman Curia, the central government of the Church, approved after nine years of preparation.

To make the accounts, 83 will be the cardinals who will enter the Conclave created in these nine years of pontificate by Jorge Bergoglio. Another 38 were created by Pope Ratzinger and 11 by Saint John Paul II. A calculation estimates that 60% of the Conclave constitutes an iron majority that will grow.

The consulted specialists affirm that the longer the Pope continues to submit to the knee injections with anti-inflammatoriesthe more your ailment continues to improve.

The traumatologists who treat him make him practice two hours of rehabilitation exercises a day.

Doctors seem to doubt that this treatment will forever overcome knee pain caused by osteoarthritis affecting the ligaments. The operation could include a new kneecap and a prosthesis that allows the Pope to change his posture and gait.

The future is uncertain because the pope’s will is to avoid a new operation. A subject that will become more and more difficult with the passage of time.

The focus now shifts to the duration of the ongoing treatment. In conjecture, some specialists believe that the wheelchair and the cane to lean on will inevitably return to being always present to help the Pope in his movements.

A more difficult scenario is expected even if the knee operation proves insufficient. The Pope was operated on in Buenos Aires in 1994 on his right hip. He has been placed on a prosthesis which apparently affects him over the years when he stands or walks.

It is the hip problem that aggravated the sciatica that the Pope suffers from and that created knee osteoarthritis.

If this were the case, a double intervention would be necessary for both knee and hip osteoarthritis, with long rehabilitation times.

Vatican correspondent

CB