Pope Leo XIV will need no further treatment after his surgery for lung cancer, his doctors announced on Wednesday.
The pope’s personal doctor and the surgeon who removed a lower lobe of the pope’s right lung at Gemelli Hospital in Rome on Oct. 13 said in a statement that follow-up tests confirmed that the cancer was localized.
“A subsequent oncology evaluation confirmed that no further treatment is necessary,” the doctors wrote.
The announcement came eight days after the pontiff’s diagnosis was revealed publicly, casting his agenda into uncertainty some 18 months into his papacy.
On Sunday, at his first public event since being discharged from the hospital a day earlier, Leo told the faithful gathered for his weekly prayer and blessing in St. Peter’s Square that he would “gradually” return to work.
That included wading into international politics, speaking by phone over the weekend with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to call for a cease-fire in the war so that civilians could evacuate from a besieged city in Ukraine. Two days later, he spoke with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine about a cease-fire.
This week, Leo met with participants at a conference at the Vatican. He appointed 24 members to a theological commission, doubling the number of lay people and increasing the number of women to eight from five.
On Wednesday, the pope reappeared in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly audience. He kicked off the event by riding through a cheering crowd on the so-called pope mobile, waving and stopping to bless babies.
Leo’s first major health scare as pontiff began less than two weeks ago, when he told a crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square for Sunday prayer that he would have a small growth on his lung removed. Two days later, the surgery was performed and doctors confirmed that he had lung adenocarcinoma, as preoperative tests had shown. Information later released by the Vatican suggested the cancer had been caught at an early stage.
In their statement on Wednesday evening, the doctors said that test results on the tissue removed during the surgery “confirmed that the tumor was a lung adenocarcinoma and that the disease was localized.”
Lung adenocarcinoma is the most common type of lung cancer. Doctors can treat that cancer with surgery alone when it is caught early. A patient may simply need frequent monitoring. Advances in treatment, including immunotherapies and drugs that target specific mutations, have helped reduce the likelihood of recurrence and improved the prognosis for later-stage lung cancers.
In an interview with Vatican News, Dr. Stefano Margaritora, the thoracic surgeon who operated on Pope Leo, said the operation had been routine “in the sense that, in similar cases involving a lung tumor of a certain size, the entire lobe containing it has to be removed.”
He added that he was pleased with the pope’s postoperative recovery. “The Holy Father has put his heart and soul into his recovery, as the most motivated people do after this kind of operation,” Dr. Margaritora said.
The pope is scheduled to travel to South America on Nov. 6 for an 11-day trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru. After Leo’s operation, concerns were raised about the schedule, which includes many flights and some high-altitude stops in Peru. The pope has made clear that he is still hoping to travel.
Nina Agrawal contributed reporting.
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