(FILES) Pope Francis gestures during the vespers at Saint Paul Outside the Walls, in Rome on January 25, 2025. Pope Francis was admitted to hospital in Rome on February 14, 2025 for tests and treatment for ongoing bronchitis, the Vatican announced. (Photo by Andreas SOLARO / AFP)
VATICAN CITY, Holy See — Pope Francis’s hospitalization for bronchitis is only the latest in a series of health issues suffered by the 88-year-old head of the Catholic Church.
Here are some of the medical problems the pontiff has had during his life, from an operation in his youth to remove part of a lung, to major surgeries and knee issues that have forced him to use a wheelchair.
READ:
Pope Francis, 88, hospitalized with bronchitis
Pope calls for Gaza ceasefire to be ‘immediately respected’
Pope spends peaceful fourth day in hospital
When he was 21, the then-Jorge Bergoglio almost died after developing pleurisy, an inflammation of the tissues that surround the lung.
He described in his 2025 autobiography “Hope” how surgeons found three large pulmonary cysts and cut away part of his right lung, in an “extremely painful” and “traumatic” procedure.
In an interview about his health with Argentinian journalist and doctor, Nelson Castro, Francis insisted however that he had made “a complete recovery… and never felt any limitation since then”.
Sciatica and acupuncture
The pope has complained in the past of a “troublesome guest”, sciatica, a chronic nerve condition that causes back, hip and leg pain that has occasionally forced him to cancel official events.
He has a distinctive limp, but it’s caused by a flat foot, Francis told Castro for his book “The Health of Popes”.
As archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was treated by a Chinese acupuncturist for his back pain, biographer Austin Ivereigh wrote.
Around the end of 1979 or early 1980, he also suffered “an almost fatal” infection of the gallbladder and had a “brief” issue with his heart in 2004 after a slight narrowing of an artery, the biographer said.
Problems with a “fatty liver” were overcome through changes to his diet.
Bach and therapy
Francis, who was head of the provincial Jesuit order in the 1970s during Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship, has also previously sought mental health support.
He spoke with “a great woman psychologist” once a week for six months during the dictatorship, he told Castro, to help him with anxiety.
Nowadays he deals with it by listening to Bach or sipping “mate”, a popular Argentinian herbal drink.
The pontiff is reported to go to bed at 9:00 pm, reading for an hour before going to sleep for six hours and waking at 4:00 am every day. Lunch is invariably followed by a 45-minute nap.
Cataracts, colon
In 2018, the pope revealed he was going to have an operation to fix cataracts, a clouding of the eye.
In July 2021, Francis spent 10 days at Rome’s Gemelli hospital after undergoing surgery to address symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon.
The condition causes potentially painful inflammation of the diverticulum, a pocket that can form on the colon walls and which tend to multiply with age.
Francis underwent a left hemicolectomy, in which the descending colon — the part attached to the rectum — is removed.
A year later he said he was still feeling the effects of six hours spent under anaesthetic during the operation.
Respiratory infections, hernia
In March 2023, the pope was again admitted to hospital with a respiratory infection, which was treated with antibiotics.
“I’m still alive!” he quipped upon leaving.
He later told US Spanish-language network Telemundo that “If we’d waited a few more hours, it would’ve been much more serious”.
In June 2023, Pope Francis underwent a three-hour hernia operation under general anaesthetic, again at the Gemelli.
Stepping down?
Francis has said he would consider stepping down if his health required it, following the example of Benedict XVI, who quit as pope in 2013 citing his declining physical and mental health.
“But the reality is that even during the days of surgery I never thought of resigning,” he wrote in “Hope”.
Biographer Ivereigh has noted “how freely and transparently Francis discusses his various conditions, physical and psychological”.
“How far we are from the Vatican refusing to confirm the Parkinson’s everyone could see in the face of John Paul II,” he wrote in The Tablet.