Pope Francis' complex pulmonary infections are not life-threatening anytime soon, his doctor said Friday from the Rome hospital where he was treated last week, but they said he was “out of danger.” Not there,” he warned.
His doctors told reporters that the 88-year-old bishop, who removed part of his lungs in his adolescence, will remain in the hospital for at least another week. Francis had been prescribed “many drugs” to treat bronchial infections that developed with dual pneumonia, but he was not on a ventilator.
The doctor said the Pope “feels good” and even received a joke early in the day, but his condition still mattered.
“I know that it's the older man who has chronic problems,” the Pope told his surgeon, Sergio Alfieri.
“The situation at my age is the grave,” the Pope said. According to his doctors, the Pope understood the risk of death at his age and told him “all doors are open.”
Dr. Alfieri said the Pope was “not out of danger,” explaining what was called a “critical infection” that was not in the bloodstream, a life-threatening condition known as sepsis.
When the Pope's second week of hospitalization, Francis, the spiritual leader of around 1.4 billion Catholics, can either stoop away or fight infections, whether physically decreases or not. Questions are growing about the future of the Roman Catholic Church. The damage to his lungs is already chronic and more recently he has spoken openly about the possibility of Francis resigning, as his predecessor, Benedict XVI, did in 2013.
Calibrating appropriate treatments involved many factors, Dr. Alfieri said. “Our job is not easy.”
Luigi Carbon, a doctor for the Vatican pope, pointed out that Francis was 88 years old after all, and it would take him time to recover. It wouldn't take long for the situation to become “unbalanced,” he said.
Dr. Alfieri said Francis is vulnerable but tough, and Dr. Carbone said Francis is not someone to give up.
Dr. Alfieri said the Pope left the room Friday evening to pray in the hospital suite chapel.
