By Alvise Armellini and Joshua McElwee
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis is showing improvement as he battles double pneumonia, the Vatican said on Friday, but he will not lead an annual Church service next week to open the Christian season of Lent.
Francis, 88, has now spent two weeks in Rome’s Gemelli hospital, where he was admitted on February 14 with a severe respiratory infection that triggered other complications.
The Vatican has not said how long the pope will remain in hospital, but it announced on Friday that Francis would not lead the traditional Ash Wednesday service on March 5, signaling his hospitalization may continue into next week.
The service, which starts the 40-day period leading up to Easter Sunday, was instead entrusted to a senior Vatican official.
In a medical update on Thursday, the Vatican said the pontiff’s condition “continued to show improvement” but his prognosis remained guarded due to the complexity of his infection.
A Vatican official, who did not wish to be named because he was not authorised to discuss the pope’s health, noted that Thursday’s statement was the second consecutive one that did not describe the pope’s condition as “critical”.
“Maybe we can say he has passed the most critical phase,” said the official.
The Vatican’s next medical update was expected on Friday evening.
Francis, who has been pontiff since 2013 and is often described as working himself to exhaustion, has continued leading the Vatican from the hospital. Staff appointments requiring his approval are announced daily.
On Friday, the Vatican released a papal letter to participants in a Church training course in Rome, which was signed by Francis with a note to say it was sent “from Gemelli hospital”.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, head of the Vatican’s development office, said in an interview with Italy’s La Stampa newspaper that Francis was getting better, albeit “slower than what we would like”.
Francis has suffered several bouts of ill health over the past two years. He is prone to lung infections because he developed pleurisy as a young adult and had part of one lung removed.
Double pneumonia is a serious infection of both lungs that can inflame and scar them, making it difficult to breathe. The Vatican said Francis suffered a “prolonged asthma-like respiratory crisis” on Saturday, but there have been no repeats.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini and Joshua McElwee; Editing by Giulia Segreti and Frances Kerry)
