A day after Pope John Paul II underwent a tracheostomy to alleviate respiratory problems in 2005, the Vatican spokesman at the time told the press that he had enjoyed a breakfast consisting of 10 cookies. And he died shortly after.
So when the Vatican spokesman said in a short statement Tuesday that the 84-year-old Francis was recovering well from colon surgery on Sunday, he had rested well, eaten breakfast, read some newspapers, and sat up to give some steps, there was – if not reasons to doubt the veracity of the Vatican statement – a cloud of skepticism surrounding the pontiff’s true condition in a well-guarded tenth floor of a hospital in Rome.
“In the Vatican there is a joke that the pope is always fine until he dies, and even a little after that moment,” said Iacopo Scaramuzzi, a Vatican expert who writes for the Askanews news agency, adding that the Secrecy is the result of a fear of divisions in the Church, caused by premature and unseemly intrigues by cardinals seeking a successor. “We should also add that the Vatican is generally not the most transparent institution in the world.”
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–The history of opacity, obscuration, and a Pravda-style coded message is well founded and has become a communication challenge, especially in the era of social networks in which incessant information and updates are expected and the Pope does not consider that the The core details of your health are nobody’s business.
Ten days before the apparently planned surgery, Salvatore Izzo, a Vatican expert and director of the Vatican-focused news site FarodiRoma, said he told the pope about his own conditions but did not tell him anything about his own health. .
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–Given the secrecy with which the announcement of the pope’s operation was handled, the Vatican only fueled doubts about its sincerity and reliability.
On July 2, a Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, issued a statement in which he reported that the prefecture of the Holy See announced that the general audiences of the pontiff would be suspended during the month of July for the “usual summer break” and would return to resume on August 4. Francis, the statement said, would continue to send messages to the faithful with his weekly Angelus prayer.
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–On Sunday afternoon, Bruni sent a message to reporters at 3:20 p.m. via the Telegram app, which he rarely uses, in which he said that Francisco, who had part of a lung removed from the 21 years old, he had been transferred to the Gemelli Clinic in Rome in the “afternoon” for a “planned surgery” in order to treat a symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon.
But if the operation was planned, as the Vatican said, it was the first time that it was heard.
The surprise announcement raised unnecessary alarm and journalists were left scrutinizing Francisco’s recent messages like someone reading the coffee grounds. “Pray in a special way: the pope needs your prayers,” he said in his weekly blessing on July 27.
For hours, while Italian television published anonymous leaks about the pope’s health and photographs of Innerspace from the colon of other patients, there were no official statements about the pontiff’s condition.
Shortly after midnight, the Vatican issued a statement that included the names of numerous doctors treating the pope saying that he “responded well to the operation, performed under general anesthesia.” On Monday, a brief Bruni bulletin issued at noon noted that Francisco was “in good general condition, alert and breathing alone” after a three-hour surgery. He said he was expected to leave the hospital in about seven days unless there were complications.
That’s it and that, experts say, is what the pope wants.
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–Despite having a large staff and a fast and agile online news outlet that accumulates millions of followers on Twitter and Instagram, experts at the Vatican say that Francis does not want his health or personal affairs to make headlines.
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–“He doesn’t want his admission to the hospital to become a spectacle,” said Paolo Rodari, a Vatican expert who writes for La Repubblica, the Rome daily. “He asked for absolute privacy and that is why the brief bulletins were published. It is simply his style ”.
Defenders of the Vatican argue that much has changed since the time of Francis’ predecessors. Pope John Paul II was visibly ill before the Vatican officially addressed the matter of his health. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, his spokesman and former medical school colleague in his youth, drew internal criticism from Vatican officials in 1996 when he tacitly acknowledged that the pope had Parkinson’s disease. And the 1998 murder investigation of a Swiss Guard commander of the pope, his wife and a subordinate was closed three hours after the bodies were discovered and was never reopened.
Scandals and secrets abounded in the papacy of Benedict XVI and factions of cardinals in the Roman curia – the bureaucracy that runs the Church – used the Italian media as canvases to paint their conspiracies and air their gossip. In 2012, the pope’s private butler leaked accusation-filled documents to Italian journalists, a tremendously embarrassing scandal known as Vatileaks. Benedict resigned shortly after.
In March 2018, Dario Vigano, the head of the Vatican’s communications department, resigned after evidence emerged that he had altered a letter from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI to make the ex-sponsor appear more supportive of a series of books on the theology of Francisco. The photographs of the letter that the Vatican office released deliberately erased two lines in which Benedict acknowledged that he had not actually read the books. Despite this, Monsignor Vigano maintained his influence on Vatican communications.
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–The following year, the Vatican also edited the pope’s statements in an interview with a Mexican television reporter in which he supported civil unions, a censorship that was only known when a documentary maker had accidental access to the original recording that had remained. in the editing room.
And the Church has hired prominent former Vatican journalists to operate an internal outlet, called Vatican News, which looks like an independent portal and often publishes news about the Church, including the recent sentencing of Vatican officials on charges of financial crimes. He publishes news-making interviews with cardinals and frustrates Catholic media competitors. But basically it is an elegant press organ and a filter against the negative coverage of Pope Francis designed for the internet age.
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–Advocates for the Vatican say it has been much more transparent about the pope’s health challenges than it was during previous papacies. In recent years, the Vatican has attributed the pope’s visible lameness and difficulty walking to sciatica, a chronic nervous condition that causes back, hip and leg pain. Francisco defines him as a “problematic guest”.
The pope has also attributed his limp to flat feet. “When you see me walking like a broody hen, it is because of that condition,” he told Nelson Castro, author of the book. The health of potatoes. But he also told in detail about physical therapy to treat a narrowing of the intervertebral disc between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae.
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–“You should write a book on the health of potatoes,” Castro wrote that Francisco told him in 2017. “You can start with me: I’m going to tell you all about my neuroses.”
Francisco told a French writer that at age 42 he saw a weekly psychiatrist to treat the stress of the Argentine military dictatorship. The pontiff has also said that he was treated with a Chinese acupuncturist for back pain when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires and that he almost died of a gallstone infection decades ago, when he was leading the Jesuits in his country. Doctors, he acknowledged, have adjusted his diet to avoid heart problems.
A biographer of Francis, Austen Ivereigh, wrote in the Catholic magazine The Tablet in May that “no pope has spoken as frankly about his health, physical and mental, as Francis.” He observed that shortly after being elected, the pope told a Bolivian archbishop that already in 1979 he was about to die from lack of oxygen at altitude, that he lost consciousness and was saved by an oxygen mask and an express flight to lower lands.
“They tell the truth, but they tell part of it,” said Izzo, who has reported on various popes and observed varying levels of transparency. “This time we hit a wall.”
Emma Bubola, Gaia Pianigiani and Elisabetta Povoledo collaborate with the reporter.
Jason Horowitz is the bureau chief in Rome; covers Italy, Greece and other southern European sites. He covered the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States, the Obama administration, and the United States Congress with an emphasis on political and special profiles. @jasondhorowitz
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