Pope Francis faced a near-death experience during his recent 38-day hospitalisation for pneumonia, according to the head of his medical team.
The 88-year-old pontiff’s condition deteriorated to the point where doctors considered halting treatment to allow him to die peacefully.
A breathing crisis on February 28, during which Francis nearly choked on his own vomit, presented a critical juncture.
“There was a real risk he might not make it,” revealed Sergio Alfieri, a physician at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.
The medical team faced a stark choice: cease treatment or pursue aggressive interventions with the potential risk of organ damage.
Ultimately, they opted for the latter course, Dr Alfieri explained in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera.
The harrowing episode marked the most serious health crisis of Pope Francis’s 12-year papacy. Admitted to Gemelli on February 14 for bronchitis, his condition worsened into double pneumonia, a particularly dangerous development given his history of pleurisy and the partial removal of a lung in his youth.
Throughout his hospitalisation, the Vatican offered unusually detailed updates, revealing that the Pope suffered four “respiratory crises”characterised by severe coughing fits stemming from constricted airways, similar to asthma attacks.
Dr Alfieri had previously said that two of the crises were critical, putting Francis “in danger of his life”.
In the new interview, the doctor said it was the pope’s personal nurse who, after the vomiting episode, instructed the medical team to keep going with treatment.
“Try everything; don’t give up,” came the message from Massimiliano Strappetti, the pope’s nurse, as recounted by Dr Alfieri.
“For days, we were risking damage to his kidneys and bone marrow, but we went ahead, and his body responded to the drugs and his lung infection lessened,” said Dr Alfieri.
Francis has been prescribed a further two-month period of rest since leaving hospital to fully heal. It has not been made clear how much he will be seen in public in coming weeks.
Recounting the pope’s first public appearance since entering hospital, when Francis appeared on a hospital balcony to greet well-wishers on Sunday, Dr Alfieri said that was the moment of the pope’s treatment that struck him the most.
“I saw him leave the room on the 10th floor of the Gemelli dressed in white,” said the doctor.
“It was the emotion of seeing the man become again the pope.”
