King Charles III and Queen Camilla will be received in a Vatican audience by Pope Francis on April 8, Buckingham Palace stated in a press release on March 17. The release, embargoed until midnight London time, said the royal couple will meet the pope during “a state visit” to the Holy See on that day.
The news is surprising, given that Pope Francis has been in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for over a month as he recovers from double pneumonia. But such an announcement would not have been made by Buckingham Palace without first having received confirmation from the Vatican that Pope Francis will be back in the Vatican by that date and able to receive them, as a senior Vatican official told America.
“The King and Queen will make a State Visit to the Holy See” on Tuesday, April 8, Buckingham Palace said in the press release. “It will a historic visit,” as it comes during the Jubilee Year 2025, “and will mark a significant step forward in relations between the Catholic Church and the Church of England, with a special service in the Sistine Chapel, joining hands in a celebration of ecumenism, and of the work The King and The Pope have done over many years on climate and Nature.”
The couple previously met Pope Francis on a visit to the Vatican on April 4, 2017. King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, also met Pope Francis on Oct. 13, 2019, at the canonization of St. John Henry Newman, and had previously met Pope Francis’ predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The king’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, visited the Vatican during the Jubilee Year 2000 and had a private audience with John Paul II, one of five popes (including Francis) that she met during her long reign.
King Charles and Queen Camilla will also “attend a Service in the Sistine Chapel, focused on the theme of ‘care for creation’,” and “in a historic first, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, will also visit the Papal Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, with which the English Kings had a particular link until the Reformation,” the press release from Buckingham Palace stated.
The royal visit comes in the middle of their “state visit” to Italy from April 7 to 9 that includes visits to Rome and Ravenna.
Pope Francis is now in his 32nd day in the hospital, where he is slowly recovering from double pneumonia. The pope’s doctors gave no medical report today, but the Vatican Press Office said this evening, March 17, that his condition “remains stable, with slight improvements thanks to the oxygen and pharmacological therapies and the physiotherapy that he is receiving.”
On March 6, the Vatican released an audio recording of Pope Francis speaking in a feeble voice, thanking well-wishers in Spanish for their prayers, leading to concerns about his recovery. But yesterday, in the first photo of Pope Francis that the Vatican has released since his admission to the hospital on Feb. 14, the pope was seen at prayer in the private chapel of his suite at the Gemelli Hospital after he concelebrated Mass. That photo, which immediately went viral, offered an encouraging sign that the pope’s health is improving. A Catholic in Australia summed up the feelings of many when he told me: “Such a consoling and impacting ‘snapshot’ of a moment in time. It’s magnificent to see the pope serenely in prayer.”
The photo showed that the pope was not using nasal tubes to assist his breathing, seeming to confirm the report from informed sources that while the pope now “uses less high-flow oxygen through the nasal tubes, and sometimes he can do without the oxygen therapy, while at night he receives oxygen using the mechanical ventilation [through a mask over nose and mouth].”
His doctors over the past two weeks have described his condition as “stable” or “stationary” in the medical updates they released through the Vatican, the most recent being last Saturday evening, March 15. They said he continues to respond positively to the therapies he is receiving and is showing “slight, gradual improvements.” He has had no more setbacks for the past two weeks, since Monday, March 3. ANSA, the Italian news agency, reported on March 17 that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, was asked today if Pope Francis had plans to resign due to his health problems and said: "Absolutely not."
Last week, his doctors concluded that “he is out of imminent danger” but still requires treatment that necessitates he remain for some time more in the hospital before he can return safely to work in the Vatican. Several specialists in the medical field consulted by the Italian press said they consider the above developments as positive signs on the road to his recovery, but they all agree that it will take more time before he can leave the hospital.
Dr. Anna Lisa Bilotta, who works in the Salvatore Mundi international hospital in Rome and is not treating the pope, told America that she too recognizes these positive signs, but she emphasized that the pope’s situation is still “complex” and it will take some more time for him to recover because of his various pathologies and the fact that it takes a long time to completely overcome pneumonia, particularly in an elderly person. The pope is 88 years old.
Though 32 days may seem a long time to be in the hospital, it is far from the record for recent popes. After an assassination attempt on his life in 1981, Pope John Paul II spent 55 days in Gemelli hospital. During his more than 26 years as pope, John Paul II spent a total of 151 days in the hospital over nine separate occasions.
This is Francis’ fourth time in the hospital during his more than 12 years as pope. His first time was for abdominal surgery and lasted 10 days (July 4 to 14, 2021); the second was for pneumonia and lasted three days (March 29 to April 1, 2023); the third was for abdominal surgery to remove scar tissue and repair an abdominal hernia, and lasted nine days (June 7 to 16, 2023).
Given that his situation is stable and the recovery process is slow, the Vatican has reduced its briefings on the pope’s condition. The next update from the pope’s doctors is scheduled for Wednesday, March 19.
