ROME – As Pope Francis enters his 14^th day at the Gemelli Hospital, now the longest of his four stays at the Roman polyclinic, some observers may be tempted to regard the long papal hospitalization as exceptional.

In fact, however, by the standards of Francis’s predecessor Pope John Paul II, now St. John Paul II, the current pontiff has a long way to go before he’ll get close to setting any records.

Indeed, as of this morning, Francis’s stay at the Gemelli is merely in a tie for fifth place on the all-time list, with the same number of days that John Paul II was hospitalized in 1992 for the removal of a benign intestinal tumor in July.

The Polish pope’s most famous spell at the sprawling Roman clinic, named for the early 20^th century Franciscan priest and physician Father Agostino Gemelli, came in May 1981, when he was rushed to the hospital following an assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square. He underwent a delicate six-hour surgery to remove the bullets that had lodged in his body and to repair the damage they had caused.

He was released from the hospital and returned to the Vatican on June 3, 1981, marking a stay of 22 days.

A couple weeks later, however, it was discovered that John Paul II was running a severe fever and he was returned to the Gemelli for treatment. There he was diagnosed with cytomegalovirus, a common infection often compared to mononucleosis. It was decided at the same time to perform a follow-up operation from the earlier surgery to close a temporary colostomy, or artificial outlet, created after an assassin’s bullet injured the lower intestines. Yet that operation couldn’t be performed until the fever from the infection was under control, which took weeks to accomplish.

In all, John Paul II was in the Gemelli on that second occasion in 1981 from June 20 to August 14, a robust total of 55 days in the hospital.

Other stays by John Paul II longer than the current hospitalization of Francis, at least for today, include a 28-day stay for an operation to repair a fracture to the right femur in 1994, and his final 18-day recovery in the Gemelli from a respiratory crisis from Feb. 24, 2005, until his return to the Vatican on March 13.

John Paul II would die just a few days later on April 2, 2005, in the papal apartments of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

In all, Pope John Paul II made seven stays at the Gemelli over the course of his almost 27-year papacy, and that’s not counting an outpatient procedure in November 1993 to repair a dislocated shoulder.

All in, John Paul II spent a grand total of 155 days at the Gemelli over his term in office, representing more than five months of his papacy. The lengthy character of so many of his hospitalizations explains why John Paul dubbed the Gemelli the “Vatican III,” after the actual Vatican centered on St. Peter’s Square and the traditional papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.

Pope Benedict XVI was never hospitalized himself at the Gemelli, though he did travel crosstown to the facility once to visit his ailing brother Georg.

By way of comparison to John Paul II, Pope Francis has spent just 36 days at the Gemelli so far, and counting – not, of course, that John Paul’s is a record anyone is trying to break.

Still, the disparity in papal hospitalizations is another reminder that over such a long pontificate, John Paul II set countless records it will be difficult for anyone else to break. In the present case, Francis no doubt would be entirely satisfied to finish a distant second.