The Vatican carried on with its Holy 12 months celebrations without the pope Saturday, as Pope Francis battled pneumonia and a fancy respiratory infection that doctors say stays touch-and-go and can keep him hospitalized for no less than one other week.
Francis slept well overnight, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a transient early update Saturday.
But doctors have warned that the foremost threat facing the 88-year-old Francis could be the onset of sepsis, a serious infection of the blood that may occur as a complication of pneumonia. As of Friday, there was no evidence of any sepsis, and Francis was responding to the varied drugs he takes, the pope’s medical team said of their first in-depth update on the pope’s condition.
“He just isn’t out of danger,” said his personal physician, Dr. Luigi Carbone. “So like all fragile patients I say they’re at all times on the golden scale: In other words, it takes little or no to turn into unbalanced.”
Francis, who has chronic lung disease, was admitted to Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14 after a weeklong bout of bronchitis worsened.
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Doctors first diagnosed the complex viral, bacterial and fungal respiratory tract infection after which the onset of pneumonia in each lungs. They prescribed “absolute rest” and a mixture of cortisone and antibiotics, together with supplemental oxygen when he needs it.
Carbone, who together with Francis’ personal nurse Massimiliano Strappetti organized take care of him on the Vatican, acknowledged he had insisted on staying on the Vatican to work, even after he was sick, “due to institutional and personal commitments.” He was cared for by a cardiologist and infectious specialist along with his personal medical team before being hospitalized.
Dr. Sergio Alfieri, the pinnacle of medication and surgery at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, said the largest threat facing Francis was that among the germs which are currently positioned in his respiratory system pass into the bloodstream, causing sepsis. Sepsis can result in organ failure and death.
“Sepsis, along with his respiratory problems and his age, could be really difficult to get out of,” Alfieri told a press conference Friday at Gemelli. “The English say ‘knock on wood,’ we are saying ‘touch iron.’ Everyone touch what they need,” he said as he tapped the microphone. “But that is the actual risk in these cases: that these germs pass to the bloodstream.”
“He knows he’s in peril,” Alfieri added. “And he told us to relay that.”
Deacons, meanwhile, were gathering on the Vatican for his or her special Jubilee weekend. Francis got sick at first of the Vatican’s Holy 12 months, the once-every-quarter-century celebration of Catholicism. This weekend, Francis was presupposed to have celebrated deacons, a ministry within the church that precedes ordination to the priesthood.
In his place, the Holy 12 months organizer will rejoice Sunday’s Mass, the Vatican said. And for the second weekend in a row, Francis was expected to skip his traditional Sunday noon blessing, which he could have delivered from Gemelli if he were as much as it.
“Look, regardless that he’s not (physically) here, we all know he’s here,” said Luis Arnaldo Lopez Quirindongo, a deacon from Ponce, Puerto Rico who was on the Vatican on Saturday for the Jubilee celebration. “He’s recovering, but he’s in our hearts and is accompanying us because our prayers and his go together.”
Beyond that, doctors have said Francis’ recovery will take time and that regardless he’ll still need to live along with his chronic respiratory problems back on the Vatican.
“He has to recover from this infection and all of us hope he gets over it,” said Alfieri. “But the actual fact is, all doors are open.”
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