Pope Francis acknowledged this Monday that he is not in good health. The pontiff said this during a meeting with a group of European rabbis before whom he preferred not to read the document he had prepared, appearing exhausted. Francisco maintains a full agenda and did not suspend his activities, but he showed signs of not being in a good moment.
“Thank you for this visit, which I like so much, but it happens that I am not in good health and for this reason I prefer not to read the speech but to give it to you and have it taken away.”“said the pontiff, with an affected voice, when receiving a group of European rabbis. In any case, he also met with the Catalan leader Pere Aragonés and, in the afternoon at the Vatican, he received nearly 7,000 children from 84 countries within the framework of a Vatican initiative for peace.
Later, papal spokesperson Matteo Bruni clarified to the Télam agency that Francisco “has a bit of a cold” so he preferred not to read the speech.
The Pope and the conflict in Gaza
Francis remains active and, in particular, is affected and mobilized by Israel’s military attack on the Gaza Strip, which has so far left more than 9,500 dead, mostly women and children; after the incursion of the Hamas group into Israeli territory to kidnap and murder around 1,400 people.
Since then, the Pope has intervened on numerous occasions calling for an end to the fighting, the release of the hostages and humanitarian aid for Gaza. This Sunday, after reciting the Angelus before thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square, Francis insisted: “I continue to think about the serious situation in Palestine and Israel, where so many people have lost their lives.”
“I beg you in the name of God to stop, cease the fire. I wish that all possibilities be studied to prevent the conflict from continuing at all costs, so that we can help the wounded, so that aid can reach Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is very serious, and so that the hostages,” the Pope asked.
Francisco’s health
At the beginning of the yearIn the run-up to Holy Week, Francis was hospitalized for three days for bronchitis at the Gemelli hospital in Rome. “I’m still alive,” he said in April when he left the hospital to resume his activities. “I only felt discomfort, but I was not afraid,” were his other words after that relapse.
After Holy Week, at the beginning of June, Francis was hospitalized again in Rome for surgery for an abdominal hernia. The operation was carried out without problems, but it kept the papal agenda suspended for about 15 days. As explained by the Vatican doctors, the operation was to eliminate the discomfort that the pontiff had felt since 2021, after undergoing surgery for diverticulitis for which 33 centimeters of his intestines had to be removed.
The 2021 intervention had been the Pope’s second since he was elected as the highest authority of the Catholic Church in 2013. The first intervention had been somewhat simpler, in 2019, a cataract operation at the Pio XI hospital in the Italian capital.
