The last weeks of Pope Francis before being hospitalized: a disease that did not pay attention, cold in a mass and difficulty breathing

Bergoglio It has never been an easy patient. “I put limits,” he explained, remembering when at the beginning of his pontificate they found “a dark spot” in his chest radiography, but he refused to undergo a nuclear magnetic resonance with contrast “because of my proclaimed allergy to iodine to iodine ” In no way: “The radiologist was stunned by my firm negative and then asked the Vatican doctor: ‘And now what do we do?’ He leaves. Francisco said: “I must have given him the impression of having a bad character,” and in effect it was never easy to convince him. That is what has also happened this time.

The Pope It has not been well for a couple of weeks. However, on February 9, Sunday of the Jubilee of the Armed Forces, sat in the open air in the Plaza de San Pedro and remained there for more than two hours. Four days before, at the Wednesday General Hearing, I had interrupted reading almost nothing more: “I want to apologize because with this intense cold I find it difficult to speak. That’s why I have asked my brother to read catechesis. He will read it Better than me. “

It was not a simple cold. The next day, the Holy See made known that “due to a bronchitis that suffers these days, and to continue with its activities, on Friday 7 and Saturday, February 8, the hearings of the Papa Francisco They will be held at the Santa Marta house. “He did not want to rest, but at least he agreed Papa.

They did not recommend him to preside over the outdoor mass on Sunday, especially on a windy and still quite cold day. But Francisco is like this: never spared. In addition, in his homily he commented on a passage from the Gospel in which, he said, we can see complaints “always put the encounter with others” to other tasks. However, You could see that I was already quite sick. He was seen with a broken voice, the tired gaze and dark circles on his face.

So, as had happened the previous Wednesday, the reading of the text lasted a short time, the right thing to review the first phrases before taking a look at the three sheets of paper that still remained and sigh: “And now I ask for a little apologies And I request the teacher to continue reading due to the difficulty I have to breathe. “

Bergoglio, However, he did not show his commitments, he was already organizing a visit to Cinecittà, and the quotes of the jubilee year continued to multiply. In fact, quite the opposite, he showed some impatience for having to stay in Santa Marta as if he were an inmate: “I am sick, I have bronchitis live here and I can’t go out, “he said desolate when he received the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris the next day.

It is likely that I would have already started a treatment with antibiotics and cortisone his face was already swollen Before being hospitalized. Only after this news was known that last week, confidentially, he had made A visit to Relámpago to the Hospital Gemelli de Isola Tiberina, close to Vaticanto undergo some controls and tests.

Last Wednesday he returned to celebrate the general audience in the Nervi classroom and, again, he resigned to read: “With my bronchitis I still can’t, I hope to do it next time.”

Los doctors had been trying to convince him to go to the hospital. In Santa Marta many were worried, “the treatment is of no use if it goes (to the street).” But the Papa Francisco He resisted until the end: “They want to take me to the hospital, but I find myself better and I prefer to be treated at home,” he sighed again on Friday morning, when he had finally decided to admit the Gemelli. Even that morning I wanted to finish first the audiences I had scheduled.