Pope described as alert, well a day after surgery

ROME — The Vatican said Monday that Pope Francis was in “good general condition” a day after undergoing colon surgery, adding that he was expected to remain in the hospital for seven days, “if no complications arise.”

The pope, 84, was “alert and breathing on his own,” at the hospital, the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement, noting that the operation had lasted three hours.

The Vatican said Sunday that the procedure had been scheduled — Francis has diverticulitis, a condition that can infect or inflame the colon — but it had made no prior announcement of the surgery, and the pope’s admission to the hospital had come as a surprise.

The operation is the first relatively serious health matter for the pope, whose eightyear pontificate has been built around his personal style, charisma and expressed desire to reinvigorate the church.

The Vatican said Francis had a lefthemicolectomy, a surgical procedure that involves removing the left side of the colon and joining the remaining sections.

Doctors not involved in the pontiff ’s care said that it is a common procedure in cases of recurring episodes of diverticulitis.

“It is a very delicate and certainly complex procedure,” said Dr. Giovanni Battista Grassi, scientific director of emergency surgery at the Casilino Hospital in Rome.

“Once he has gotten through the postoperative stay, once he has undergone an adequate rehabilitation, he can return to living his life in a normal way, without any problems,” Grassi said.

Complications could arise during the postoperative phase if the sections of the colon were not correctly rejoined during surgery, he said.

It is the first time that Francis has been admitted to a hospital since becoming pope in 2013. For the most part, his health has not caused concern. In 1957, he had an upper lobe of his lung removed as a result of complications from tuberculosis. And in recent years, his breathing has seemed labored during speeches. He had a cataract removed in 2019.

Francis has maintained

an often exhausting schedule during his foreign trips, most recently to Iraq in March. He has, however, clearly slowed — in part because he has sciatica, which causes leg and back pain — and has missed some engagements. This past year, he missed New Year’s Eve and Day services because of a flareup of that condition.

The surgery Sunday was performed by Dr. Sergio Alfieri, who heads the hospital’s complex operational unit for digestive surgery, assisted by nine other doctors, including the pope’s personal physician, Dr. Roberto Bernabei.

Francis is resting on the 10th floor of a wing of the Gemelli Polyclinic, a university hospital where St. John Paul II was taken for emergency treatment after being shot in May 1981. John Paul was repeatedly treated at the hospital for various conditions, to the point that he began to jokingly call it “the third Vatican.”