Pope Francis is well enough to meet with Vatican No. 2 over candidates for sainthood

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis, hospitalized in critical condition with double pneumonia, was well enough to meet with the Vatican secretary of state to approve new decrees for saints and call a formal meeting to set the dates for their canonization, the Vatican said Tuesday.

The audience, which occurred Monday, signaled that the machinery of the Vatican was still grinding on and looking ahead even with Francis, 88, hospitalized and doctors warning his prognosis is guarded.

The Vatican’s Tuesday noon bulletin announced that Francis had approved decrees for five people for beatification and two for canonization during an audience with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, the so-called Vatican “substitute” or chief of staff. It was the first known time the pope had met with Parolin, who is essentially the Vatican prime minister, since his Feb. 14 hospitalization.

The Vatican statement said that during the audience, Francis had “decided to convene a consistory about the future canonizations.”

Such an audience and decision is par for the course when Francis is at the Vatican. He regularly approves decrees from the Vatican’s saint-making office, albeit during audiences with the head of the office, not Parolin. But the forward-looking sense of the future consistory was significant, given his illness.

The only other outsider who is known to have visited the pope, other than his personal secretaries and medical personnel, is Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, who visited Feb. 19.

In a subsequent bulletin, the Vatican announced that Francis had additionally named a handful of new bishops for Brazil, named a new archbishop for Vancouver and modified the law for the Vatican City State to create a new hierarchy.

Pope slept well

On Tuesday morning, the Vatican’s typically brief morning update said: “The pope slept well, all night.”

The previous evening, doctors had said he remained in critical condition with double pneumonia but reported a “slight improvement” in some laboratory results. In the most upbeat bulletin in days, the Vatican said Francis had resumed work from his hospital room, calling a parish in Gaza City that he has kept in touch with since the war there began.

The Argentine pope, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, has been hospitalized since Feb. 14 at Rome’s Gemelli hospital and doctors have said his condition is touch-and-go, given his age, fragility and pre-existing lung disease before the pneumonia set in.

But in Monday’s update, they said he hadn’t had any more respiratory crises since Saturday, and the flow and concentration of supplemental oxygen has been slightly reduced. The slight kidney insufficiency detected on Sunday was not causing alarm at the moment, doctors said, while saying his prognosis remained guarded.

Nightly prayer vigil begins at St. Peter’s

After night fell, thousands of faithful gathered in a rain-soaked St. Peter’s Square for the first of a nightly ritual recitation of the Rosary. The prayer evoked the 2005 vigils when St. John Paul II was dying in the Apostolic Palace, but many of those on hand said they were praying for Francis’ recovery.

“We came to pray for the pope, that he may recover soon, for the great mission he’s sharing with his message of peace,” said Hatzumi Villanueva, from Peru, who praised Francis’ empathy for migrants.

Standing on the same stage where Francis usually presides, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said that ever since Francis had been hospitalized, a chorus of prayers for his recovery had swelled up from around the world.

“Starting this evening, we want to unite ourselves publicly to this prayer here, in his house,” Parolin said, praying that Francis “in this moment of illness and trial” would recover quickly.

The vigil was to continue Tuesday night, presided over by another senior Vatican official, Cardinal Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, who heads the office responsible for the Catholic Church in the developing world.

Allies and ordinary faithful hopeful

Francis’ right-wing critics have been spreading dire rumors about his condition, but his allies have cheered him on and expressed hope that he will pull through. Many noted that from the very night of his election as pope, Francis had asked for the prayers of ordinary faithful, a request he repeats daily.

“I’m a witness of everything he did for the church, with a great love of Jesus,” Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga told La Repubblica. “Humanly speaking, I don’t think it’s time for him to go to Paradise.”

Maradiaga, a founding member of Francis’ inner circle of cardinal advisers, said he himself had been near death with COVID-19, on high flows of oxygen like Francis. “I know the pope may be suffering and as a result I feel closer to him in prayer.”

At Gemelli on a rainy Tuesday morning, ordinary Romans and visitors alike were also praying for the pope and reflecting on the teachings he has imparted over nearly 12 years. Hoang Phuc Nguyen, who lives in Canada but was visiting Rome to participate in a Holy Year pilgrimage, took the time to come to Gemelli to say a special prayer for the pope at the statue of St. John Paul II outside the main entrance.

“We heard that he is in the hospital right now and we are very worried about his health,” Nguyen said. “He is our father and it is our responsibility to pray for him.”

Prayer intentions for Lent released

In another sign that the Vatican bureaucracy was running even in Francis’ absence, the Holy See press office released the pope’s prayer intentions for Lent, the solemn period leading up to Easter. In it, the pope urged the faithful to keep hope alive, and to put themselves in the place of migrants and the less fortunate. Francis signed the document on Feb. 6, a week before he was hospitalized.

“It is hard to think of the biblical exodus without also thinking of those of our brothers and sisters who in our own day are fleeing situations of misery and violence in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones,” Francis wrote in the text.

“It would be a good Lenten exercise for us to compare our daily life with that of some migrant or foreigner, to learn how to sympathize with their experiences and in this way discover what God is asking of us so that we can better advance on our journey to the house of the Father.”

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Giovanna dell’Orto contributed.

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