Pope Francis underwent two new acute respiratory crises on Monday and was given in non -invasive mechanical ventilation, in another setback to his battle against pneumonia, the Vatican said.
Doctors extracted “copious” quantities of mucus from his lungs for two bronchoscopies, in which a camera point tube is sent to the airways with a monitoring miller to vacuum liquid.
The Vatican said that mucus was the body’s reaction to original pneumonia infection and not a new infection, since laboratory tests do not indicate any new bacteria.
Francis remained alert, oriented and cooperated with medical staff. The prognosis remained kept. Doctors did not say if he had stayed in a stable state.
Doctors often use non -invasive ventilation to avoid intubation or the use of invasive mechanical ventilation. Francis was not intubated during this hospitalization. It is not clear if he has provided advanced directives on the limits of his care if he refuses or loses consciousness.
The crises were a new setback in what has become a battle of more than two weeks by the 88 -year -old Pope, who has a chronic pulmonary disease and had part of a lung withdrawn to overcome a complex respiratory infection.
In a late update, the Vatican said that the episodes were caused by a “significant accumulation” of mucus in its bronchial lungs and spasms. The “abundant secretions” were extracted during the bronchoscopies and the pope was put back on non -invasive mechanical ventilation, a mask which covers his nose and his mouth and pumps oxygen in the lungs, said the Vatican.
The Vatican has not published Francis photos or videos since entering the hospital on February 14 with a complex pulmonary infection. It has become the longest absence of its 12 -year papacy.
The archbishop urges Francis to speak
The Vatican defended Francis’s decision to recover in peace and out of the public’s eyes. But on Monday, one of his friends closest to the Vatican, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, urged him to let his voice be heard, saying that the world needed to hear it.
“We need men like the one who is really universal and not only unilateral,” said Paglia, speaking after a press conference to launch the annual assembly of his Pontifical Academy for Life, the Vatican Bioethics Academy, who has the theme of this year “The end of the world?”
Francis wrote a message to the Assembly, dated February 26, in which he deplored that international organizations are increasingly ineffective to combat the threats facing the world and are compromised by “short -sighted attitudes concerned with protecting particular and national interests”.
It is a theme that he has already articulated. Francis also called on peace on several occasions between Russia and Ukraine while trying to maintain traditional diplomatic neutrality of the Vatican, and tried to carry out a similar balancing act for the War of Israel with Hamas in Gaza.
Even Vatican ambassador is not particularly close to Francis, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, said the faithful needed to hear his voice at a time when war rages in Europe. Gaenswein was the longtime secretary of Pope Benoît XVI. Francis exiled it to be the Vatican ambassador in the Baltics after publishing a thesis in 2023 which criticized Francis.
“The voice of Pope Francis is of vital importance to the whole world because he is the only authority that speaks of peace, which condemns war, all the ongoing wars starting with Ukraine,” said the Repubblica, cited Gaenswein.
The hospitalization of 17 nights from Francis is by no means close to the papal file during the numerous hospitalizations of St. John Paul II in a quarter of a century.
Canadian cardinal Michael Czerny told CBC News that Pope Francis had trouble breathing during a visit three weeks ago before the pontiff was hospitalized and diagnosed later with pneumonia.
