The city of Vatican is an anxious place. The clergy keeps their phones by their pillows. Journalists, piled up in the Holy See press office, open emails with apprehension. The faithful began to come together in the expectation on Saint-Pierre square.
Everyone expects the Vatican’s dry bulletins to the state of Pope Francis, which remains critical after being taken to the hospital 11 days ago with bronchitis which turned into pneumonia in the two lungs. On Monday afternoon, a few hours before the Vatican reported a “slight improvement”, the telephones of the Vatican officials buzzed with texts falsely signaling the death of Francis.
Francis, who now has the beginnings of kidney failure and infections, can still recover, although the prognosis is not promising, according to doctors. For veterans of papal transitions, daily health reports, the influx of world media, creeping speculation and special prayer services have a familiar and disturbing sensation.
“These are delicate moments,” said Duban Cordor, a 27-year-old seminar from Colombia, who came on Monday evening to Place Saint-Pierre to pray the Rosary for Francis, who, according to him, had always concluded his conversations and His remarks with a call to “pray for me”.
The seminar said that he had helped Francis during a prayer service on Christmas Eve and had seen him deeply tired, but also in peace. “I don’t think it will be long – I think it is preparing for a moment of tranquility, knowing that it is the end of his life.”
A wet Monday evening, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the second commander of the Vatican, who is a must of increasing speculation on who could replace Francis, led the cardinals, the bishops and a few thousand faithful in front of the Saint-Pierre basilica in A prayer of the rosary for the health of the Pope.
Under an intermittent drizzle, the cardinal kneel before a portrait of Madonna and the child and addressed the crowd, composed largely of priests, nuns and pilgrims.
“For 2000 years, the Christian people prayed for the Pope when they were in danger or sick,” said Cardinal Paroline, adding that the time had come to pray for Francis “at this moment of illness and trial.”
Francis is the 266th Pope to direct the Roman Catholic Church, and for a large part of the history of the Church, in particular when the papacy acted as a monarchy directly and indirectly governing large expanses of land, the death of ‘A pope could transform the fortune of the powerful aristocrats, change the direction of a powerful state, or even determine where the church had its registered office.
“The upheaval which follows the death of the pope today is incomparably different from what could have happened” centuries ago, “said Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, historian of the Church. He said that in some cases, the death of a pope would be kept secret, lest a papal entourage, or sometimes even the population of Rome, be able to ransad the apostolic palace. “Papal death caused all kinds of problems.”
In the modern era, long after the Pope lost his time powers, the transitions took place more easily. Now, a change at the top, while having a great consequence for the priorities, the vision and the ideological complexion of the Church, is unlikely to have a lot of geopolitical impact. However, the last days of a pope attract pilgrims and the media around the world in Rome, and they focus the attention of the faithful to their spiritual leader.
The cardinals said that the rosary before the death of Pope John XXIII in 1963. It was during a similar prayer session on Saint-Pierre square in 2005 that Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, then under Security of State Vatican, announced the death of Pope John Paul II after his last days of agony.
The formerly vigorous Polish pope had long suffered from Parkinson’s disease: he had lost his ability to speak clearly and had often seemed curved and sick. His failing health had been the subject of morbid attention for years.
“It was so bizarre,” said Father Paul Algiers, a 42 -year -old priest from Augusta, Georgia, who studied theology in Rome and recalled these years as a surveillance of sustainable papal death.
Francis, who initially hypothesized that he would have a short pontificate, rather led the church for a dozen hectic and charged years. During the first years, he crisscrossed the globe, met world leaders and played an active role in defense of the problems that were the most concerned with him, especially in the name of migrants and marginalized.
But a bad knee and sciatica began to physically slow down Francis more recently. He started to depend on a rod and a walker and then a wheelchair.
Francis underwent colon surgery in 2021 and was operated again two years later for a hernia that developed because of this operation. Throughout, he maintained a demanding calendar, but his breathing became developed, while he was struggling with respiratory infections and now an explosion of pneumonia and infections that put him in critical condition.
The faithful and clerics present on Monday preferred to focus on François’s life rather than what seemed to be the end. Bishop Manuel Nin, the apostolic in the Greek Byzantine Catholic Church, described it as “unhealthy” to set itself on something that was ultimately “in the hands of God”.
But some religious feared that the latter slowdown could be the last of Francis.
“They say that he has spent a good night, he rests, but at the same time, it is clear that his prognosis is not good,” said Mgr Earl Fernandes de Columbus, Ohio, who also attended the Roslet on Saint-Pierre square. “This is the beginning of the end.”
Bishop Fernandes, who said that he was following “Pope’s news in several languages every day”, hypothesized that even if Francis had to improve, it would be more difficult for him to be with people, Something Francis “still loved,” he said.
“It would kill him,” added the bishop.
A solemnity has permeated Saint-Pierre square, the rain shone the paved stones and the faithful invocations chanted with the saints. A pair of gulls flowing. In the surrounding palates, private speculation on which could replace Francis began, the ideological camps taking shape. But the event provided a public forum to church leaders, of all political persuasions, to rally around the Pope in his need.
Among the cardinals next to Cardinal Parolin on the steps of the Saint-Pierre Basilica on Monday evening, there were prelates which often appeared on short lists to replace Francis, including Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines. But there were also cardinals with whom Francis has been competing for a decade, including the American cardinal Raymond Burke, the de facto chief of opposition to the pope’s agenda.
“When someone is dying, everything that is said and does,” Father Algiers said, comparing the church to a family who gathers around a dying father, whatever the divisions to The house. “He is the Holy Father and he is in trouble. Death has a way to specify what matters. »»
