2023-12-27 19:17:56
“How am I? I am still alive”. It is with this motto that Pope Francis has long faced the ailments and infirmities of age. Just a month ago, acute bronchitis forced him to undergo antibiotic therapy. And due to the ‘rump’ (flu in Spanish), as Bergoglio himself defined it during an audience, no trip to Dubai for the pontiff at the end of November for the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change . And then two surgical operations: the last, on 7 June at the Gemelli Polyclinic, for a laparocele lodged in the scar from previous laparotomy surgeries carried out in past years. Not to mention a ligament injury in his right knee that has afflicted him for some time, an ailment mainly due to poor posture caused in turn by a hip problem.
“Hearings, speeches, encyclicals, travel, public and private meetings certainly represent an unusual stressful activity for an 87-year-old man, given that at this age he has been retired for some time – explains Nicola Ferrara, full professor of Geriatrics at the University of Naples Federico II -. If we then add to all this the pathologies from which Pope Francis has been suffering for some time and the acute events that have affected him in the last year – let us remember that Bergoglio is sensitive to the respiratory system – I see a man who is fragile and vulnerable like all the elderly but who , despite his pathologies and his years, he tolerates stress, demonstrating a certain physical and mental mettle.”
For Ferrara, in short, “seen by someone who is not his personal doctor, the pontiff appears aged but with cognitive and partly motor skills, he walks with satisfactory aids”. With the jokes about his state of health ‘I’m still alive’, or the frequent reminder he makes to the faithful ‘Pray for the Pope, he always needs it’, “in my opinion he behaves like a man with all his frailties. The hope is that he can continue for a long time to come, demonstrating to the world that even in his decades of advanced age he can carry out his pastoral work, appreciated even by non-believers. Certainly the high-profile medical-health staff who are alongside Bergoglio have an important role in maintaining the performances of our pontiff,” he concludes.
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