VATICAN CITY (RNS) – After six days in the hospital, Pope Francis asked that his doctors give a press conference on Friday (Feb. 21) to explain his medical condition. While the doctors said they are optimistic about the pope returning home to the Vatican in the coming weeks, his advanced age and preexisting conditions make him a “fragile” patient.
“The pope is fine,” Sergio Alfieri, the head surgeon at the Gemelli hospital in Rome, where the pope is being treated, said during the press conference at the hospital. “Is the pope out of danger? No, the pope is not out of danger,” he said, but specified the pope is not in a life-threatening situation.
Pope Francis admitted himself to the hospital last Friday (Feb. 14) after struggling with bronchitis and difficulty breathing and over 10 days of being treated with cortisol and IV antibiotics at his home in Domus Sancta Marta, where he lives at the Vatican. Once at the hospital, medical tests showed he suffered from a polymicrobial infection, meaning he was infected with various bacteria, viruses or fungi, which had led to pneumonia in both lungs.
A Vatican statement on Thursday (Feb. 20) said the pope’s “clinical condition showed a slight improvement” and that he …