Patients and pilgrims alike offered prayers Wednesday on the grounds of the Rome hospital where Pope Leo XIV was recovering from surgery that found lung cancer.
“Hematology greets the pope” read a poster hung from one window of the hospital, Policlinico A. Gemelli. Below, a banner saying “Long live the pope” was laid out on a bench in the sun.
Messages of support for Leo have flooded in from world leaders, politicians and faithful around the globe. Nuns gripping their rosaries have bowed their heads in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.
In a statement issued by the Vatican on Wednesday, Leo’s doctors said that his post-operative tests were normal and that his recovery was “proceeding as expected.” The pope has started walking in his room and has resumed eating normally, the statement added.
Leo, 71, is expected to spend about a week in Gemelli hospital, a huge complex in northwestern Rome. Just outside the main entrance on Wednesday, votive candles, prayer cards, a plaster cherub and a miniature orchid decorated a statue of Pope John Paul II. Several people filtered through, some falling to their knees.
Fernanda Ibarra Mendoza, 41, read a prayer for healing in front of the statue as her 6-year-old daughter drew a card for Pope Leo with pink highlighters.
“Pope Leo needs our prayer, and the church, and the world, needs Pope Leo,” Ms. Ibarra Mendoza said. “In these dark times, we pilgrims must be near to him.”
Mariana Nicula Ancuta, 48, also stopped by the statue after her appointment.
“Gemelli is a marvelous hospital, which took out tumors in both of my breasts,” she said. “I know that he’s in the right hands, in the best hands in the world.”
Surgeons removed the lower lobe of the pope’s right lung on Tuesday after finding a cancerous nodule. The Vatican has not said whether the pope will undergo further treatment.
Simona Zanfrilli, 45, came to pray for Leo after her chemotherapy session and said that she hoped he would not require the same “devastating” treatment. Ms. Zanfrilli said she thought, though, that the pope’s diagnosis could offer fellow cancer patients comfort and even hope.
“It sounds strange,” she said, “but this morning during my treatment, I felt almost lucky. I thought: I’m in the same place, on the same floor, even, as the Holy Father.”
Giacomo Ahmetovic, 32, had not initially realized that the pope was inside the hospital when he brought his father in for lung surgery on Wednesday morning. He said that he had no plans to pray for the pontiff but that knowing the pope “has exactly what my father has, that makes me feel better.”
“The doctors must be practiced,” he said, sitting on a bench as he waited for his father to emerge from the operating theater.
Inside the hospital, a long corridor features photos and posters about John Paul II — the hospital’s first papal patient.
Sister Angela Maria Aylas, a Peruvian nun attending for a checkup, paused in the hallway in front of images showing John Paul II at Gemelli in 1981. She said she was “terrified” for Leo.
“We already pray a lot for the pope, every day,” she said. “Now we have to pray even more.”
“The rosary, vespers, everything we can,” she added. “Mamma mia.”
The cancer diagnosis came only about a year and a half into Leo’s papacy — the first American pope, he was elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church in May 2025. That weighed heavy on the mind of Giuseppe Antonio Perazzo, 76, who came to the hospital before his lunch.
Gemelli was where Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, was hospitalized several times — including for more than a month of treatment shortly before his death.
“It’s much too soon to re-elect a new Holy Father,” said Mr. Perazzo, “so I’m praying that he can recover.”
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