“PRAYING FOR HIM”
Francis, who had part of a lung removed as a young man, had been breathless and struggled to read his texts in the days leading up to his admission.
On Feb 22, he suffered a “prolonged asthmatic respiratory crisis” and on February 28 had “an isolated crisis of bronchospasm” – a tightening of the muscles that line the airways in the lungs.
On Monday, Francis “experienced two episodes of acute respiratory failure, caused by a significant accumulation of endobronchial mucus and consequent bronchospasm”, according to the Vatican.
Acute respiratory failure, which can be life-threatening, occurs when the lungs cannot pass enough oxygen into the blood or when carbon dioxide builds up in the body.
Francis is in a special papal suite at the hospital with its own chapel. His medical team has not commented on the length of his stay, nor how long his recovery could take.
He has had very few visitors. Among them is Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, the Vatican’s number three, who visited on Sunday.
In an interview published Wednesday, Parra gave no details at all about how Francis was, just saying he was “carrying in his body signs of fragility and illness, like every human being”.
In the meantime, the Vatican has been plunged into uncertainty, officials continuing their work while waiting anxiously for each medical bulletin.
On Tuesday, Catholics from Argentina gathered in front of Gemelli hospital and placed among the candles a blue and white “Our Lady of Lujan”, a celebrated 16th-century statue of the Virgin Mary.
Francis used to pray to Our Lady of Lujan before becoming pope, when he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
“He knows that the whole Church is praying for him, and our prayer is a strength that he receives from the Holy Spirit,” Fernando Laguna, a priest from the Argentine parish in Rome, told AFP.
