Pope Francis underwent two new acute respiratory crises on Monday and was given in non -invasive mechanical ventilation, in another setback to his battle to fight pneumonia, said the Vatican.
Doctors extracted the “abundant” quantities of mucus from his lungs for two bronchoscopies, in which a camera point tube was sent to the respiratory tract 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 the medical staff. The prognosis remained kept. The doctors did not say if he had stayed in a stable state, although they refer to the crises in the past, suggesting that they were finished.
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 removed, 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 that 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.
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The Vatican defended Francis’s decision to recover in peace and out of the public’s eyes. But on Monday, one of the closest friends of Francis to the Vatican, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, urged him to let his voice be heard, saying that the world had 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 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”. He was dated February 26 and signed “Gemelli Polyclinic”.
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.
Catholic education maintains that life must be defended from conception to natural death. He insists that chronic patient patients, including those of vegetative states, must receive “ordinary” care such as hydration and nutrition, but “extraordinary” or disproportionate care can be suspended if they are no longer beneficial or only prolong a precarious and painful life.
Francis explained that for a meeting of the bioethics organization in Paglia in 2017, saying that there was “no obligation to have recourse in all circumstances to all possible remedies”. He added: “This therefore makes a morally qualified decision possible to withdraw” too zealous treatment “.”
Paglia, whose office helps to articulate the position of the Catholic Church on end -of -life care, said that Francis is like any other Catholic and would follow the teaching of the Church if it came to that.
“Today, the Pope gives us extraordinary teaching on fragility,” he added. “Today, the Pope, not in words but with his body, reminds us all, we, the elderly, to begin with, that we are all fragile and that we must therefore take care of each other.”
The hospitalization of 17 nights from Francis does not in any way reach the papal file which was established during the numerous hospitalizations of St. John Paul II in a quarter of a century.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press
