ROME (Reuters) – Pope Francis is recovering from abdominal surgery that lasted three hours and was “without complications”, the Vatican said in a brief statement on Wednesday.
The Vatican had announced earlier in the day that the 86-year-old pontiff was to undergo surgery to treat a laparocele, an abdominal hernia which sometimes develops on the scar of a previous operation and causes significant pain.
The Vatican medical team decided that this operation, including an incision in the abdomen and the fitting of a prosthesis, should take place to avoid intestinal obstruction.
Pope Francis will stay in hospital “several days” to recover from this surgery, the Vatican said.
The head of the Catholic Church made no allusion to this operation during his weekly audience on Wednesday morning, during which he appeared in good spirits.
The day before, the sovereign pontiff had spent 40 minutes at the Gemelli hospital for a check-up. He had already spent five days in the same hospital at the end of March for a lung infection, and last month he missed hearings for a day due to a fever.
Pope Francis, who celebrated the 10th anniversary of his pontificate in March, often uses a wheelchair or cane due to persistent knee pain.
In July 2021, he had part of his colon removed in an operation to treat a painful bowel condition called diverticulitis. He said earlier this year that this infection had come back.
Last year, the pope said he did not want to have knee surgery because the general anesthetic used for his colon operation had led to unpleasant side effects.
(Writing Keith Weir, French version Nicolas Delame, Victor Goury-Laffont and Tangi Salaün, edited by Blandine Hénault and Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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