The story circulating among Vatican journalists goes that after Pope Francis was admitted to a Rome hospital on Friday, the editors of several major Italian newspapers began frantically calling one another to verify unsubstantiated rumors that the pope was dead.
The rumors continued over the weekend, emerging from, of all places, the press room of Italy’s most important song contest. On Tuesday, after it was announced that the pope had pneumonia, some Vatican journalists received texts from sources and colleagues suggesting he had already died.
“Self-feeding rumors that start coming out like that in an uncontrolled way,” said Fabio Marchese Ragona, the Vatican correspondent for Mediaset’s TG5 newscast. “A circus that began last Friday.”
The Vatican has pointedly refused to address the rumors, some of which have made their way into the notoriously loosely sourced Italian news media, since it announced that Pope Francis, 88, had been hospitalized with bronchitis. By Tuesday that diagnosis had evolved to pneumonia in both lungs.
But the Vatican doles out information about Francis’ condition so sparingly — saying on Wednesday that it appeared to be “stationary” — that it has only reinforced questions about how forthcoming, and trustworthy, it is. Given the Vatican’s past record of obfuscation and opaqueness when it comes to a pope’s health — among other matters — a thick cloud of earned skepticism remains.
The day after Pope John Paul II underwent a tracheotomy in 2005, the Vatican’s spokesman then told reporters that he had enjoyed a breakfast of 10 cookies and a yogurt. John Paul died not long after.
Doctors at the Policlinico A. Gemelli, where the pope has been hospitalized, have been tight-lipped, and access to the 10th floor of one wing, where popes have a private suite, is severely limited. “It’s easier to get into the Kremlin than the 10th floor,” said Dr. Diego Maria Nati, Red Cross chief medical officer for a part of the Lazio region.
Keeping information tightly held is a Vatican tradition.
“The Holy See has inherited from its monarchical form the idea that the health of the sovereign is an affair of state and not an affair of the public,” much like the British royal family or Soviet leaders, said Alberto Melloni, a church historian and the director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna. “So there’s always been this instinct when it comes to covering up the state of the pope’s health.”
Insiders know the Vatican operates in this opaque way, Mr. Melloni said. “It’s just like in a family, where there’s a certain decorum to maintain and some things are just not said,” he added.
For Roberto Rusconi, an expert in the history of Christianity, the Vatican’s tendency to obfuscation is in part a political decision, since the pope is at the apex of an enormous power structure. But it also reflects a prevalent mind-set in the church, whether it relates to the pope’s health or clerical abuse.
“There’s an orientation to not be transparent; there’s nothing to be done,” he said.
Since Francis was hospitalized, the Vatican press office has issued two decidedly spare updates a day.
Generally, the morning bulletin has given cursory news of how the pope slept. On Wednesday, the Vatican said: “The pope had a peaceful night, he woke up and had breakfast.”
The evening bulletins have been more medical in nature, at times more alarming, if still light on details. On Wednesday evening, the update said that Francis’ blood tests showed “slight improvement, particularly in inflammatory indices.” It added that after breakfast, Francis read some newspapers, “then went about his work activities with his closest collaborators.”
Francis was visited Wednesday afternoon by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who said she wanted to take get-well wishes to the pope on behalf of the government and the nation.
“I am very happy to have found him alert and responsive,” the prime minister said in a statement. “We joked around, as always. He has not lost his proverbial sense of humor.”
The Vatican has said Francis is being treated for a polymicrobial infection, which means he has a mix of microbes, like a virus or bacteria, in his lungs or another part of his respiratory tract.
Doctors have had to modify his treatment more than once, but the Vatican has not specified what drugs he is taking, beyond saying he is being given cortisone antibiotic therapy.
The medical bulletins that have emerged from the Vatican have been contrasting and bare bones and at times unbelievable, said Dr. Nati, the Red Cross chief medical officer for a part of the Lazio region.
There had been no clear mention before Tuesday that a CT scan and X-rays had been taken of the pope’s lungs, common exams for people with respiratory problems since the pandemic, he said, adding,
“If it took four days to diagnose a bilateral pneumonia then woe to those who end up at the Gemelli.”
In the pope’s case, “people would like to know a little more, because so many are concerned, so I’d be a little bit more forthcoming,” he said.
Defenders of the Vatican argue that much has changed since the time of Francis’ predecessors — Pope John Paul II was clearly ailing before the Vatican officially addressed the issue — and that it has become much more transparent.
Vatican statements duly note the reason whenever Francis misses a meeting or an audience, including the onset of bronchitis on Feb. 6.
Still, people were taken by surprise when the Vatican announced one Sunday afternoon in July 2021 that Francis had been taken to the Gemelli hospital for a “scheduled surgery” to have part of his colon removed.
The abruptness of the announcement raised eyebrows, and suspicions, at the time.
Francis himself has become more forthcoming about his health, speaking openly about his bad knee and sciatica, a chronic nerve condition that causes back, hip and leg pain and that has forced him to use a wheelchair, cane or walker.
In 2023, he was hospitalized at the Gemelli for what the Vatican said was a respiratory infection. Francis later admitted he’d had “acute and severe pneumonia in the lower lungs,” telling reporters on a return flight from Hungary that he’d been rushed to the hospital.
But in a world where truth is in short supply, some say that even if the Vatican were to be more forthcoming, it wouldn’t be believed.
“Even if they put out two official bulletins a day, with clear information, there would still be people who say: ‘No, look, what the Vatican is saying is a lie. The truth is that he’s already dead,’ ” said Mr. Marchese Ragona.
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