Pope Francis’ clinical condition again showed improvement today, as it did yesterday, his doctors said in the latest medical bulletin issued by the Vatican around 7 p.m. on Thursday evening, Feb. 27.
“Throughout the day, he alternated between high-flow oxygen therapy and a Ventimask,” it said. A Vatican source described this change as an improvement, as the oxygen breathed through the Ventimask is mixed with air from the room.
The report emphasized that because of “the complexity of his condition, additional days of clinical stability are required before a prognosis can be determined.” In other words, he is not yet out of danger.
“The Holy Father dedicated the morning to respiratory physiotherapy, alternating it with rest,” the medical report said, and in the afternoon “after a further session of physiotherapy,” he “prayed in the chapel of the private apartment on the 10th floor [of the Gemelli Hospital], where he received the Eucharist. He then resumed his work activities.”
Commenting on the latest medical report, Dr. Anna Lisa Bilotta, who works in the Salvator Mundi International Hospital in Rome and is not treating the pope, told America, “The situation is very similar to yesterday; there is a slight improvement, but it is a slow therapy that takes time.”
She noted that the doctors “have now given him a Ventimask that enables him to receive high-flow oxygen, instead of the nasal cannula of recent days, perhaps because the nasal cannula may have been causing him discomfort, but maybe also because the doctors want to wean him off the oxygen and get him to breathe autonomously without it.” She said that “the respiratory therapy may also be aiming at this, helping him breathe better.”
At the same time, she said, the doctors remain cautious and have not removed the “reserved prognosis,” which means that “he is not yet out of danger.” She repeated what she has said before: that “this is a slow process; it requires much time for the therapy to take full effect.”
An informed Vatican source, commenting on today’s report, said, “He has come out of the critical phase,” a word that was not used in either yesterday’s or today’s report. But neither report says this explicitly; they speak instead of “the complexity” of his situation.
After Pope Francis spent his 13th night in his hospital bed, the Vatican reported just after 8 a.m. today that “he had slept well” and “was resting.” A Vatican source said he was sitting up in his armchair, eating normally and “in good humor.”
The pope is now in his 14th day in the Gemelli Hospital, being treated for pneumonia in his two lungs. Yesterday’s medical bulletin signaled “slight improvements” in his condition: The blood tests showed positive results two days in a row, indicating his anemia has been overcome; the slight kidney insufficiency that had emerged some days earlier is said to have subsided and is no longer a problem; and the pope has not had any further respiratory crises since the severe crisis on Saturday morning, Feb. 22, when his doctors had to give him high-flow oxygen and blood transfusions.
At the same time, while the doctors said the “lung inflammation” was evolving normally, they did not reveal whether the infection was receding or not; this would seem to suggest that it is still there.
On Wednesday evening, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, 91, the dean of the College of Cardinals, led a Rosary in St. Peter’s Square and asked Our Lady to intercede with her Son to help “Pope Francis recovery quickly so that he can take up his apostolic ministry, with the fullness of his physical strength, and with the pastoral dynamism that is so characteristic of him.”
Cardinal Mario Zenari, 79, who has been nuncio in Syria throughout the 14-year civil war there, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, “Here in Syria, non-Catholics, too, are asking me how is the pope [and saying] he has taught us what hope is.”
America has learned that Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka are also praying for the pope’s recovery and recalled his meeting with them in Colombo, the capital of that country, in January 2015.
Cardinal Isao Kikuchi, S.V.D., the archbishop of Tokyo, told America, “We, too, [in Japan] are in prayers for the Holy Father.”
