ROME – Pope Francis’s medical team has announced that after five weeks of hospitalization and two brushes with death, he will be discharged Sunday, but must continue to rest and undergo his various therapies at home.
Speaking to journalists during a March 22 press conference, Italian Doctor Sergio Alfieri, director of the medical surgical department of Rome’s Gemelli Hospital and head of the pope’s medical team there, said, “the good news is that the Holy Father is being discharged.”
“The Holy Father will return to Santa Marta,” he said, referring to the pope’s residence in the Vatican’s Saint Marta guesthouse.
However, while well enough to leave the hospital, Francis will be required to observe a period of rest for two months and must continue his drug regimen and his motor and respiratory physiotherapies.
Doctor Luigi Carbone, deputy director of the Health and Hygiene department of Vatican City State and the pope’s personal doctor, said the pope will still need to receive oxygen treatment at home, but will be slowly weaned off that as his recovery continues.
Alfieri said that when the pope was admitted to Gemelli Hospital on Feb. 14, he presented with “acute respiratory failure” due to a polymicrobial respiratory infection, meaning it had various components, including viral and bacterial elements, and “a severe bilateral pneumonia.”
There were two incidents during the pope’s hospitalization “that were very critical in which the pope’s life was at risk,” he said, saying it was to the combined effects of treatment, especially oxygen therapy, that the pope was able to gradually recover.
Alfieri explained that while the pope is clinically healed of his pneumonia and his infection is better, there is still some bacteria in his lungs that will potentially take months to disappear.
He said the pope’s voice, largely due to consistent high-flow oxygen treatment, is raspy, like when a person has been talking for too long and needs to rest their voice, and it will therefore be some time before the pope is able to resume giving speeches.
“Pope Francis has continued to work and will do so at Santa Marta,” he said, noting that the pope has worked throughout his 5-week hospitalization, but will be required to abstain from meeting groups and from holding particularly strenuous meetings and activities during his 2-month period of rest.
Alfieri said the pope, while requiring at times constant oxygen treatment, was never intubated and remained vigilant and alert throughout the entire ordeal.
He insisted on the pope’s good humor throughout his hospital stay, saying that despite a low ebb at his most critical moments, he knew the pontiff was fine when he responded, “I’m still alive” after being asked how he was feeling following one of his moments of crisis.
Carbone said concerns for doctors now that the pope is going home are no different than any other patient at Pope Francis’s age, and with his underlying conditions, and he is hopeful the pope will be able to resume speeches “in the short term.”
Pope Francis is still expected to meet King Charles and Queen Camilla at the Vatican April 8.
In terms of what that meeting might look like, what will happen with papal liturgies for Holy Week and Easter, and whether Francis will be able to travel to Turkey as planned in May, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said an evaluation would be made closer to the dates in question, depending on the pope’s condition and recovery at that time.
Bruni said the pope will come to the window of his room on the 10th floor of Gemelli Hospital to give a blessing after his Sunday Angelus address March 23, and will be discharged shortly after. It is unclear whether he will attempt to speak publicly on that occasion.
