“I think that now a new pope begins,” Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, told journalists this Friday afternoon, March 21. Before a book presentation in Rome, the cardinal said that Pope Francis “is a man of surprises and surely he will have learned many things” during his stay of more than a month in Gemelli Hospital, “and who knows what he will bring out of the hat!”
Cardinal Fernández said Pope Francis is “physically really well” but still “needs rehabilitation.” Asked if he believed the pope would resign, the Argentine cardinal, who is very close to Francis, dismissed the idea: “I truly do not believe it. That no!”
Addressing the question of resignation again after the presentation, the cardinal said: “As far as I know the hypothesis of resignation was never taken into consideration. Instead, I believe that this time of pain, tiredness and limits is the beginning of a new phase that will be fruitful and will be part of this pontificate.”
Asked if the pope would be back in the Vatican for Easter, the cardinal responded cautiously: “He would like to come back, but the doctors want to be 100 percent sure [before allowing this] and prefer to wait a little because he has his way of life. He wants to give everything.”
After the presentation, the cardinal said, regarding the pope being back for Easter: “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
The cardinal said that the pope wants to use the time he has left in service to the church, not to “heal himself.” Moreover, when he returns to the Vatican, “it’s not easy for him to follow the [doctors’] advice.”
Cardinal Fernández made clear, however, that Pope Francis’ situation after this hospitalization will not be the same as before. “His life will certainly have to change [when he returns to the Vatican], but I cannot give details,” the cardinal said, indicating that a new phase of the papacy will begin.
The cardinal confirmed that he has “been in contact” with Pope Francis, but he didn’t say when. “I was in contact, and I am happy because I knew that his body would react in one way or another, and in the end, I was right because he is really very well physically,” he said. “Now he needs rehabilitation because a long time [receiving] high-flow oxygenation dries you up and you almost have to learn to speak again. He has little strength in his voice, and so he needs therapy, time to recover the strength of his voice, also the muscles, because he has been too long without moving…and that’s the stage that comes now.”
He said, however, that “the general picture of his body is as before” he went into the hospital.
Asked how Francis is emotionally after a month in the hospital, the cardinal said:
Imagine [what it is] for a person like him, who didn’t want to go to the hospital, [but] he was convinced by some very close friends, who are not exactly—I don't know what bad words they used—[but told him], “You have to go, otherwise we cut off this relationship.” That’s how they convinced him. Imagine how heavy it is for him. But he is one of those persons from other times, who have immense strength, a capacity for sacrifice, [able] to give meaning to these dark moments.
“I can say that it has certainly been a very hard time for him, this month, for him who loves to give himself entirely, to be there in the hospital bed without being able to help others, to give a word of comfort to other people,” Cardinal Fernández said after the presentation. “But he has a great ability to learn from life, from whatever comes, to grasp beauty even in dark moments. For this reason, I am sure that something very beautiful will come out of this experience—we do not know what it will be, it will be the surprises of Pope Francis.”
All this came after a day of silence from both the Vatican and the pope’s doctors at Gemelli Hospital. This evening, March 21, the Vatican press office provided a brief update on the pope’s progress to recovery. It said that “his medical condition is stable, with small improvements in breathing and in motor activity.” He continues with the therapies—pharmacological, respiratory and physical. As the doctors reported in their last update, he no longer receives oxygen through mechanical ventilation at night, but only with nasal tubes. By day he receives increasingly less high-flow oxygen through nasal tubes.
Pope Francis passed his 36th day in the hospital receiving the aforementioned therapies, praying and doing some work. He did not receive visitors.
It is expected that this Sunday’s Angelus address by the pope will be given in written form, as on the previous Sundays since he has been hospitalized. If anything changes in this regard, the Vatican will let the media know in advance.
The doctors do not intend to issue another update on his health before Monday, March 24.
Earlier in the day, Roberto Pasolini, O.F.M.Cap., the preacher of the papal household, began the first of a series of Lenten homilies for the Roman Curia by inviting those present to “send a greeting to the Holy Father who cannot be among us today, but we hope he can soon, and we continue to assure him of our prayers.”
Yesterday, March 20, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the secretary for relations with states, celebrated Mass at the Gesù, the first Jesuit church built in Rome and the mother church of the Society of Jesus, for the health and recovery of Pope Francis.
The English-born archbishop, who has been the Vatican’s foreign minister for more than 10 years, celebrated this Mass at the request of the dean of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.
He told the many ambassadors present that “a choral prayer is rising up” across the world for Pope Francis “who in this moment of human fragility serves no less effectively, though in another form, the church and humanity.” And, he said, the pope thanks people “for the closeness and the prayer that rises abundantly to Heaven for him.”
In his homily, reported by Vatican Media, Archbishop Gallagher spoke about the divine love that “constantly flows” from God “through the pierced Heart of Jesus” and which seeks our response, saying God’s love meets us in “our misery, our sins, and takes on the quality of mercy.”
The Vatican’s foreign minister said, “Our own times witness the threat of evil becoming increasingly significant, and darkness at times seems to prevail even over the light,” as “we sadly see in martyred Ukraine, in Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in other places of conflict.”
Moreover, instead of following the logic of encounter as advocated by the pope, many embrace “the perverse logic of hatred, domination, and thus war, on every level.”
He said the world “needs a type of diplomacy” that is “detached from miserable human interests in order to work freely in favor of the common good” and “the supreme goods of justice and peace.”
Humanity needs “a higher light,” he told the ambassadors, and that “we must learn to hear the voice of conscience.”
He noted that “those who have fought for human dignity, who struggled against dictatorships, tyranny, and injustices—even if they did not always share the Christian faith or a religious faith, did so in the name of conscience, recognizing in it that higher voice which points out the right path.”
Archbishop Gallagher concluded his homily by inviting diplomats to “enter into silence and enter this inner sanctuary of conscience,” while “entrusting ourselves to the Virgin of Silence, to whom we also entrust the pope’s health and peace in the world.”
The archbishop celebrated this Mass the day after the pope’s doctors issued their latest reassuring report on his medical condition. That update on March 19, the Feast of St. Joseph, to whom Francis has a special devotion, confirmed that his condition continued to be stable and that his lung infection was under control, although not totally eliminated.
This afternoon, March 21, an ecumenical prayer service was held to pray for the health of Pope Francis and of all the sick and suffering at the church in the San Lorenzo International Youth Center, near the Vatican. The initiative was promoted by the Taizé Community, the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and the Office for Ecumenism and Dialogue of the Diocese of Rome, in collaboration with the Methodist and Reformed Churches Ecumenical Offices of Rome and the Anglican Center of Rome.
