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ROME: Pope Francis was well enough to meet with the Vatican secretary of state to approve new decrees for possible saints, the Vatican said Tuesday, in announcing some major governing decisions that suggest he is getting essential work done and looking ahead despite being hospitalized in critical condition with double pneumonia.
The audience, which occurred Monday, signaled that the machinery of the Vatican is still grinding on even though doctors have warned that the prognosis for the 88-year-old Francis is guarded.
Decisions on saints and a formal meeting of cardinals
The Vatican’s Tuesday noon bulletin contained a series of significant decisions, most importantly that Francis had met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the Vatican “substitute” or chief of staff. It was the first known time the pope had met with Parolin, who is essentially the Vatican prime minister, since his Feb. 14 hospitalization.
During the audience, Francis approved decrees for two new saints and five people for beatification — the first step toward possible sainthood. Francis also decided to “convene a consistory about the future canonizations.”
Francis regularly approves decrees from the Vatican’s saint-making office when he is at the Vatican, albeit during audiences with the head of the office, not Parolin. A consistory, which is a formal meeting of cardinals, to set the dates for the canonizations is a necessary ceremonial step in that saint-making process, but the announcement of it was also forward-looking, given his illness.
No date was set for the meeting. But it was also at a banal consistory to set dates for canonizations on Feb. 11, 2013, that Pope Benedict XVI announced, in Latin, that he would resign because he couldn’t keep up with the rigors of the papacy. Francis has said he, too, would consider resigning after Benedict “opened the door” and became the first pope in 600 years to retire.
Giovanna Chirri, the reporter for the Italian news agency ANSA who was covering the consistory that day and broke the story because she understood Latin, said that she didn’t think Francis would follow in Benedict’s footsteps, “even if some would want it.”
“I could be wrong, but I hope not,” she told The Associated Press. “As long as he’s alive, the world and the church need him.”
Francis’ English biographer, Austen Ivereigh, said that it was possible, and that all that matters is that Francis be “wholly free to make the right decision.”
“The pope has always said that the papacy is for life, and he has shown that there is no problem with a frail and elderly pope,” Ivereigh said. “But he has also said that should he ever have a long-term degenerative or debilitating condition which prevents him from fully carrying out the exercise of the papal ministry, he would consider resigning. And so would any pope.”
Francis’ ideas about resignation
Francis has said that if he were to resign, he would live in Rome, outside the Vatican, and be called “emeritus bishop of Rome” rather than emeritus pope given the problems that occurred with Benedict’s experiment as a retired pope. Despite his best efforts, Benedict remained a point of reference for conservatives before he died in 2022, and his home inside the Vatican gardens something of a pilgrimage destination for the right.
Francis has also written a letter of resignation, to be invoked if he became medically incapacitated.
Speculation about a possible resignation has swirled ever since Francis was hospitalized, but the Vatican hierarchy has tamped it down. Parolin himself told Corriere della Sera over the weekend that such speculation was “useless” and that what mattered was Francis’ health.
In addition to the audience with Parolin, the Vatican released Francis’ message for Lent, the period leading up to Easter, in yet another forward-looking sign. In a subsequent bulletin, Francis named a handful of new bishops for Brazil, a new archbishop for Vancouver and modified the law for the Vatican City State to create a new hierarchy.
Many if not all of these decisions were likely in the works for some time. But the Vatican has said that Francis has been doing some work in the hospital, including signing documents.
The pope slept well
On Tuesday morning, the Vatican’s typically brief morning update said: “The pope slept well, all night.”
The previous evening, doctors had said he remained in critical condition at Rome’s Gemelli hospital with double pneumonia, but reported a “slight improvement” in some laboratory results. In the most upbeat bulletin in days, the Vatican said Francis had resumed work from his hospital room, calling a parish in Gaza City that he has kept in touch with since the war there began.
Doctors have said the condition of the Argentine pope, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, is touch-and-go, given his age, fragility and preexisting lung disease before the pneumonia set in.
But in Monday’s update, they said he hadn’t had any more respiratory crises since Saturday, and the flow and concentration of supplemental oxygen has been slightly reduced. The slight kidney insufficiency detected on Sunday wasn’t causing alarm at the moment, doctors said.
Allies and ordinary faithful hopeful
Francis’ right-wing critics have been spreading dire rumors about his condition, but his allies have cheered him on and expressed hope that he will pull through. Many noted that from the very night of his election as pope, Francis had asked for the prayers of ordinary faithful, a request he repeats daily.
“I’m a witness of everything he did for the church, with a great love of Jesus,” Honduran Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga told La Repubblica. “Humanly speaking, I don’t think it’s time for him to go to Paradise.”
At Gemelli on a rainy Tuesday morning, ordinary Romans and visitors alike were also praying for the pope. Hoang Phuc Nguyen, who lives in Canada but was visiting Rome to participate in a Holy Year pilgrimage, took the time to come to Gemelli to say a special prayer for the pope at the statue of St. John Paul II outside the main entrance.
“We heard that he is in the hospital right now and we are very worried about his health,” Nguyen said. “He is our father and it is our responsibility to pray for him.”