The Vatican city is an anxious place. Keep your clergy with your phones with pillows. Journalists, pushed at the Holy See Printing Office, open e -poruke with anxiety. Faithful they began to gather at St. Peter’s Square.
Everyone is waiting for the Vatican newsletters about the state of Pope Francis, who is still critical after taking him to a hospital 11 days ago with a bronchitis that developed into pneumonia in both lungs. On Monday afternoon, hours before the Vatican reported on “slight improvement”, the phones of the Vatican officials buzzed the texts falsely reported to Francis’ death.
Francis, who now has the beginnings Kidney failure and infectionIt may still be recovering, although the prognosis is not promising, doctors say. For the veterans of the papal transitions, daily health bullets, the appearance of global media, angry speculation and special prayer services have a well -known and vicious feeling.
“These are sensitive moments,” said Duban Correror, a 27-year-old Colombia seminar, who came to St. Peter’s Square on Monday night to pray the Rosary for Francisco, for whom he noted that he had always concluded his conversations and noted with the appeal to “pray for me.”
The seminar said he helped Francis during the prayer service on Christmas Eve and saw him deeply tired but also in peace. “I don’t think it will be long – I think he is preparing for a moment of tranquility, knowing that this is the end of his life.”
On the wet Monday night, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the second commander of the Vatican, who was fasted in increasing speculations on who could replace Francisco, led Cardinals, Bishops and several thousand believers in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Pope’s Health Prayer.
Under the intermittent conflict, the Cardinal knelt before the portrait of Madonna and the child and addressed the multitude, composed mainly of priests, nuns and pilgrims.
“The Christian people prayed for the Pope for 2000 years when he was in danger or ill,” said Cardinal Parolin, adding that now it was time to pray for Francis “at the moment of illness and trial.”
Francis is the Pope 266 to lead the Roman Catholic Church, and for most of the history of the Church, especially when the papacy acted as a monarchy directly and indirectly by managing large parts of the country, the death of the Pope could transform the wealth of powerful aristocrats, change the direction of the powerful state or even determine where it is The church had its headquarters.
“The overlook that follows the Pope today is incomparably different from what could have happened,” said Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a church historian. He said that in some cases, the Pope’s death would be secret, for fear that the papal environment, or sometimes even the population of Rome, could drive away the apostolic palace. “The papal death caused all kinds of problems.”
In modern times, long after the Pope lost his temporal power, the transitions were smoothly started. Now the change is at the top, although it has great consequences for priorities, vision and ideological skin of the Church, probably will not have much geopolitical influence. However, the last days of the Pope attract pilgrims and newspaper media, from all over the world, to Rome, and they direct the attention of believers on their spiritual leader.
Cardinals said that the Rosary was before the passage of Pope John XXIII. 1963. During a similar prayer session at St. Peter’s 2005 Square, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, then the Secretary of State for the Vatican, announced the death of Pope John Paul II after his last days of agony.
Formerly a strong Polish Pope suffered a long time from Parkinson’s disease: he lost the ability to speak clearly and often seemed hunchbacked and sick. His unsuccessful health for years was the subject of morbid attention.
“It was so weird,” said Father Paul Alger, a 42-year-old priest from Augustus, who studied theology in Rome and recalled that year as a perennial papal death.
Francis, who initially speculated that he would have a short pontificate, instead led the church a dozen events and hectic years. In the first years, he hid the Globus, met with world leaders and played an active role in hiring the questions he care about, especially on behalf of migrants and marginalized.
But the bad knee and sciatica began to physically slow down Francisco in recent times. He started dependent on the reed and walker and then a wheelchair.
Francis had a colon surgery in 2021 and was re -operated on two years later because of a hernia that developed due to that surgery. He kept a demanding schedule throughout, but his breathing became disparaged, while he struggled with respiratory infections and now an explosion of pneumonia and infections that brought him to a critical condition.
Faithful and priests who attended Monday rather focused on Francis’ life, not what seemed to be over. Bishop Manuel Nin, the apostolic exarh of the Greek Byzantine Catholic Church, called “unhealthy” to fix himself to something that is ultimately “in God’s hands.”
But some priests worried that this last fall could be Francis’s last.
“They say he had a good night, he rests, but at the same time it is clear that his forecast is not good,” said Bishop Earl Fernandes of Columbus, Ohio, who also attended the rosary in St. Peter’s Square. “That’s the beginning of the end.”
Bishop Fernandes, who said he was following the “news of the pope in multiple languages every day,” speculated that even if Francis became better, it would be harder for him to be around people, something that Francis “always loved,” he said.
“That would just kill him,” the bishop added.
The ceremony pervaded St. Peter’s Square, the rain sliced cobblestone stones and was faithful to the appeal to the Virgin Mary. A couple of seagulls. In the surrounding palaces of private speculations about who could replace Francis, the ideological camps took a form. But the event was provided by a public forum of the Church leaders, all political assurances, to gather around the Pope in its time of need.
Among the Cardinals next to Cardinal Parolina on St. Peter’s Basilica Staircase on Monday night were prelates that often appeared on short lists to replace Francisco, including Cardinal Luis Antoni Tagle from Filipin. But there were also the cardinals with whom Francis clashed a decade, including US Cardinal Raymond Burke, a de facto leader of opposition to the Pope’s agenda.
“When someone dies, everything that has been said and done,” said Father Alger, comparing the Church to a family gathering around a father who dies regardless of division at home. “He is the Holy Father and is in trouble. Death has a way to clearly explain what is important.”
