The Vatican city is an anxious place. The clergy keep their phones from their cushions. The journalists, crammed in the press office of the Santa See, open and -mail with trepidation. The faithful began to gather waiting in Piazza di San Pietro.
Everyone awaits the final bulletins from the Vatican on condition of Pope Francis, who remains critical after being brought to the hospital 11 days ago with bronchitis that developed in lungs in both lungs. On Monday afternoon, hours before the Vatican reported a “light improvement”, the Vatican’s officials ‘phones buzzed with texts that falsely report Francis’ death.
Francis, who now has the beginning of renal insufficiency and infections, could still recover. Tuesday evening, the Vatican said that Francis was in “critical but stable” conditions. In his night medical bulletin, the Vatican said he had suffered a follow-up CT in the afternoon to check the lung infection and that he had resumed his “work activities” in the morning.
For veterans of papal transitions, daily health bulletins, the influx of global media, rampant speculation and special prayer services have a family and threatening sensation.
“These are delicate moments,” said Duban Etival, a 27 -year -old seminar of Colombia, who came to Piazza di San Pietro on Monday evening to pray the Rosary for Francis, who noticed had always concluded his conversations and observations With a do you appeal to “pray for me”.
The seminarian said he had witnessed Francis during a Christmas Eve prayer service and that he had seen him deeply tired, but also at peace. “I don’t think it will take – I think he’s preparing for a moment of tranquility, knowing that this is the end of his life.”
In a wet Monday evening, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the second in command of the Vatican, which is a fixed appointment in the growing speculation on who could replace Francis, cardinals, bishops and a few thousands of faithful in front of the Basilica of San Pietro in a prayer of the Rosary for the Pope’s health.
Under an intermittent rain, the cardinal kneel in front of a portrait of Madonna and Child and turned to the crowd, was largely priests, nuns and pilgrims.
“For 2000 years the Christian people prayed for the Pope when they were in danger or sick,” said Cardinal Parolin, adding that now the time had come to pray for Francis “in this moment of illness and trial”.
Francesco is the 266th Pope to guide the Roman Catholic Church and for most of the history of the Church, especially when the papacy acted as a monarchy directly and indirectly who ruled great land bands, the death of a pope could transform the fortunes of powerful Aristocrats, changes the direction of a powerful state or even determines where the Church had its headquarters.
“The upheaval that follows the Pope’s death today is incomparably different from what could have happened” centuries ago, said Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, historian of the Church. He said that in some cases the death of a pope would be kept secret, out of fear that a papal entourage, or sometimes also the population of Rome, could resign the Apostolic Palace. “A papal death caused all types of problems.”
In the modern era, long after the Pope has lost his time powers, the transitions were performed more fluidly. Now it is unlikely that a change at the top, despite having a great consequence for the priorities, the vision and the ideological complexion of the Church, has a great geopolitical impact. However, Pope’s last days attract pilgrims and the media, from all over the world to Rome, and focus on the attention of the faithful on their spiritual leader.
The cardinals said that the rosary before the disappearance of Pope John XXIII in 1963. It was during such a similar prayer session in Piazza di San Pietro in 2005 that Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, then under the Secretary of State for the Vatican, announced death of Pope John Paul II after his last days of agony.
The Polish Pope was once vigorously suffered for a long time about Parkinson’s disease: he had lost his ability to speak clearly and often seemed curved and sick. His failed health was the subject of morbid attention for years.
“It was so strange,” said Father Paul Alger, a 42 -year -old priest from Augusta, Georgia, who studied theology in Rome and recalled those years as a perennial watch for papal death.
Francis, who initially hypothesized that he would have a short pontificate, instead led the church for a dozen years full of events and demanding. For the first years, he crossed the globe, he met world leaders and played an active role in supporting the problems to which he worried most, in particular on behalf of migrants and marginalized.
But a bad knee and sciatica have started to physically slow down Francis more recently. He began to depend on a stick and a walking area and then on a wheelchair.
Francis underwent colon surgery in 2021 and was managed again two years later for an hernia that developed due to that intervention. During everything, he continued to a demanding program, but his breath became suspended, while he has fought with respiratory infections and now an explosion of pneumonia and infections that have put him in critical conditions.
The faithful and clerics present on Monday preferred to focus on Francis’ life rather than on what the end seemed to be. Bishop Manuel Nin, the Apostolic Esorca of the Greek Byzantine Catholic Church, called him “unhealthy” to fix himself on something that was eventually “in the hands of God”.
But some clerics worried that the latter recession could be Francis’ last.
“They say she has spent a good night, he is resting, but at the same time it is clear that his prognosis is not good,” said Bishop Earl Fernandes of Columbus, Ohio, who also participated in the Rosary in the square of San Pietro. “It’s the beginning of the end.”
Bishop Fernandes, who said that he follows “the news on the Pope in several languages every day”, hypothesized that even if Francis should improve, it would be more difficult for him to be with people, something that Francis “is always loved”, has said .
“This same would kill him,” added the bishop.
A solemnity pervaded the square of San Pietro, the rain has reduced the cobbled stones and the faithful songs invoked to the Virgin Mary. A couple of seagulls in climb bowed. In the surrounding buildings, private speculation about who could replace Francis started, ideological fields take shape. But the event provided a public forum for the leaders of the Church, of all the political persuasions, to gather around the Pope in his moment of need.
Among the cardinals next to the cardinal parolina on the steps of the Basilica of San Pietro on Monday evening there were prelates that often appeared in short lists to replace Francis, including Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle delle Filippine. But there were also cardinals with whom Francis collided for a decade, including the American cardinal Raymond Burke, the de facto leader of the opposition to the Pope’s agenda.
“When someone is dying, everything that is said and done,” said Father Alger, comparing the church with a family that gathers around a dying father, regardless of the divisions at home. “He is the Holy Father and is in trouble. Death has a way to clarify what matters. “