Pope will be admitted to hospital for lung nodule surgery – Vatican

The Vatican said Pope Leo will be admitted to hospital on Tuesday ahead of surgery to remove a lung nodule.

The surgery will require a week-long recovery in hospital, and the Vatican on Monday cancelled all Leo’s audiences through to October 20.

Leo himself revealed the discovery of the nodule during his Sunday noon prayer and said he was following doctors’ advice to have it removed.

The Vatican press office said on Monday that no particular issue precipitated the tests, denying Italian media reports suggesting an inflammation had prompted Leo to have the checkup.

On the eve of his departure for Rome’s Gemelli hospital, it was business as usual on Monday at the Vatican.

The 71-year-old Leo presided over an audience with members of a Rome-based charity, the Circolo San Pietro, and received a donation from them.

He spoke in a strong, clear voice, praising their service and sacrifice.

The crowd gave him a rousing round of applause afterwards.

The pope had six other private audiences, made three appointments and the Vatican released a letter he had penned to the outgoing dean of the College of Cardinals, thanking him for his service. The letter was signed on Sunday.

In the afternoon, he had been expected to rejoin a week-long conference he convened on ministering to families. But in the evening, the two conference organisers released a statement saying that given Leo’s absence, they were changing plans and would delay publishing the final statement from the meeting until after he recovers.

“Of course, it comes as a surprise to all of us that the Holy Father needs to be hospitalised for a few days for an intervention,” Quebec Cardinal Gerald Cyprien Lacroix said.

“But it will not change what we’re doing.”

Leo’s surgery marks the first major health event of his 17-month pontificate.

It was significant because the pope himself revealed the news, in perhaps the most public way possible: at the end of his Sunday noon blessing, with thousands of people in St Peter’s Square.

The Vatican has for centuries guarded the pope’s health and has often sent out confusing information, or none at all, about papal illnesses.

Pope Francis tried to change that by being upfront about his frailties and musing on his eventual death. But even during his pontificate, information was tightly controlled.

Leo’s decision and announcement suggested an unusual level of transparency by the US pope.

A lung nodule is a small abnormal area measuring less than 3cm (one inch) that sometimes appears on a CT scan of the chest or abdomen.

Often, the scans are done to investigate trauma or a lung infection, unrelated to a lung cancer screening.

A nodule can be benign or malignant, and often surgical removal is recommended to ascertain whether it is cancerous since performing a lung biopsy by needle can be difficult.

Oncologists say if the nodule turns out to be cancerous, Leo’s prognosis is “excellent” since it will have been removed at an early stage.

Unlike his predecessor Pope Francis, whose decade-long respiratory problems made him speak in a whisper, Leo tends to project his voice and frequently sings his prayers.