Healthy people gathered in the dark praying for Pope Francis on Thursday evening in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City for the first time since the Catholic world leader was hospitalized almost three weeks ago. With a brief recording, Francis thanked them for their prayers.
“May God bless you, and the virgins protect you,” he said in Spanish. He sounded fragile and tired.
Francis has not been seen publicly since he was hospitalized on February 14th. His prospects for full recovery have become dark for many Catholics as his illness continues. At the same time, his constellation of recovery takes the familiar rhythm for those sitting at the bedside of a sick loved one or those who have been worried about news many miles away.
It's a period of waiting and prayer, but it's also about googling new medical terms and frequently checking phones for updates from people with designated family points. Medical features distract you from bigger ideas about the unbearable unknown.
In this case, intimate vigils unfold on a global stage, with the world's most powerful Christians as decay, frail and central characters.
Vatican news reports that in three weeks since Francis entered Gemeri Hospital in Rome, he usually arrived twice a day. With the time difference between Italy and the United States, where Pope Francis is widely popular, Americans wake up to new information. (On Thursday afternoon, the Vatican said there would be no more new updates until Saturday for “clinical feature stability.”
Sometimes the updates are “The Pope slept well” – sometimes very detailed, referring to high-flow oxygen therapy, hemodynamic parameters, and once “episodes of vomiting due to inhalation”.
“There's just too much information about the privacy of the Pope,” says Pastor Francis J. Hoffman, host of the American national radio show Family Rosary. “It's probably against the country's HIPAA law, but I want to know because people love him just like you want to know if your parents are in the hospital.”
Father Hoffman, a priest known to radio audiences as “Father Rocky,” prays live rosarys in his program every night, and receives prayer requests from the audience. Recently, children, especially those who have called to pray for the Pope.
Last week, a nine-year-old caller from Tampa, Florida, said, “I pray to Pope Francis.”
“If all nine-year-olds out there prayed for Pope Francis, he must be in a hurry and better,” Father Hoffman reassured her, referring to the evening gatherings at St. Peter's Square to pray for Francis' strength and healing.
Then, of course, the story of Francis might not end in healing. He stayed in the hospital on Ash Wednesday, the day of the Christian liturgical calendar, which serves as a reminder of human mortality. Around the world, priests taint the crossing of ashes on the parishioners' foreheads, saying, “Don't forget that you are dust and you return to dust.”
On Wednesday, the Vatican reported that “the Holy Father took part in the ritual of the Holy Ashes Blessings imposed upon him by the celebration.” He then went almost every day since he was hospitalized, so he received the Eucharist.
At Mass on Ash Wednesday in Roman Mass, the Cardinal read aloud the holy man prepared for the occasion of Francis. “This is good for us.”
Charles Camothy, a professor of bioethics at Clayton University School of Medicine, ponders why Ash Wednesday and Francis' illness contemplate the meaning of “good intentions” to Catholics and others.
“Finiteness in some form gives meaning to our lives,” he said. “We have limited time here and we need to live our lives with that in mind.”
Others pointed out that the way in which illness and death approaches can shed new light on a person's personality. Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Pope's US representative, observed that two seemingly simple phrases reoccurred in the Vatican update on Francis' health on Sunday, “He's fine” and “He's resumed work.”
In Washington, sister Constance Vite wakes up every morning and checks her phone for updates on Pope Francis' health before going to bed every night.
Sister Constance, 62, was in her 20s when she joined the poor group, a group of nuns whose mission is to care for the elderly. She spent her life caring for frailty and death.
Now she is watching from afar as her church heads go through the same course of illness, moving through the decline she has seen for years.
“If it is God's will, I pray like any other Catholic for his healing,” she said. “But I feel at the same time he's ready to go through that door.”
She has drawn comfort from Francis's own words about aging, frailty and death. His attention to seniors was clear from the start. In one of his first public appearances as Pope, at a large gathering of young people in Brazil in 2013, he praised his grandparents and encouraged the audience, “I would like to thank the ongoing witnesses of their wisdom.”
John Paul II was called the “Youth Pope” because of his relationship with the young people, recalls Sister Constance. “For me, Francis was the elderly pope, in the care he showed and the attention he attracted to them,” she said. “I'm always grateful to him and I love him for that.”
