Pope Faces Lung Surgery Less Than a Month Before the Pontificate's Longest Trip. Vatican Has Not Changed the Program With 14 Flights and Nine Masses

Pope Leo XIV announced on Sunday that doctors found a nodule in his lung and that he will have it surgically removed. The Vatican has scheduled the procedure for the first days of this week and estimates post-operative recovery at approximately one week. In less than four weeks, the pope is due to fly off on a twelve-day trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, whose detailed program the Holy See published in September and has not changed since.

The Pope Announced the Finding Himself, the Vatican Did Not Share Details

Leo XIV said this during Sunday's Angelus prayer in St. Peter's Square. According to his own words, doctors caught the nodule "at a very early stage" and it is well-defined, and they recommended the procedure and he decided to heed their advice. He asked the faithful to pray for him. Vatican News ↗

The Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, added that the operation is scheduled for the first days of this week and that post-operative recovery will take approximately a week. The Vatican did not disclose the exact date. The procedure is to take place at the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic in Rome. Angelus News ↗

The Vatican also did not say whether the finding is malignant, and it did not release further details about the pope's health condition. The 71-year-old Leo had no previously known serious health problems, and at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, he regularly plays tennis and swims. TASR ↗ NPR ↗

A Program Nobody Has Changed So Far

The trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru is the longest foreign trip of his pontificate. The Holy See published the detailed schedule in September, six weeks before departure, and it includes fourteen flight segments, nine public Masses, and over 19,000 miles, or roughly 30,000 kilometers. The Tablet ↗

The official Vatican document lays out the program minute by minute. It begins on November 6 at seven in the morning with departure from Rome and ends on November 17 at 10:25 with arrival at Rome's Fiumicino airport. In between are three meetings with heads of state, prayer vigils at two stadiums including Lima's Monumental with a capacity of eighty thousand, a visit to a prison in Buenos Aires, and two helicopter transfers. Vatican.va ↗

After the surgery was announced, the Vatican did not announce any change to the program. In the same address, the pope also thanked people for their prayers for the pastoral visit he said he will carry out in Peru, so he is apparently counting on the trip going ahead. Angelus News ↗ CBS News ↗

One Specific Day Stands Out as the Most Demanding

Sunday, November 15, stands out from the schedule. The pope is to depart Chiclayo at 7:50 and land in Cusco, which lies 3,399 meters above sea level, at ten o'clock. This is followed by a meeting at the Saqsaywaman archaeological site and an Angelus prayer in front of the cathedral. Vatican.va ↗ PromPerú ↗

At 1:05 p.m. he is to fly to Pucallpa in the Amazon, which sits at an altitude of around 155 meters. There he will meet with missionaries and representatives of Amazonian peoples and celebrate an afternoon Mass, after which he departs for Lima at 7:05 p.m. In a single day, then, he will take three flights and cross an altitude difference of over three kilometers—on the ninth day of a trip that begins less than a month after surgery. The Vatican document says nothing about altitude or acclimatization. Vatican.va ↗

Francis Was Given Ten Weeks, Leo Has Less Than Four

The closest comparison is five years old and concerns Slovakia. Francis underwent bowel surgery at the same hospital on July 4, 2021, during which 33 centimeters of his large intestine were removed, and he left Gemelli after ten days. National Catholic Reporter ↗ Euronews ↗

He announced the trip to Budapest and Slovakia just a few hours before being admitted to the hospital and flew out on September 12, roughly ten weeks after the procedure. America Magazine ↗

The difference lies in both numbers. Francis's trip lasted four days and covered two countries, during which he spent only a few hours in Budapest, and commentators still called it demanding for the then 84-year-old pope. He himself said that on his first trip after the operation he had to be more careful, since one needs to recover fully. Crux ↗

Leo has twelve days, three countries, and a gap of less than four weeks ahead of him. On the other hand, he is thirteen years younger and, unlike Francis, who had part of a lung removed in his youth after severe pleurisy, has no known lung history. National Catholic Reporter ↗

Slovakia Is Still Waiting in Line

While the South American trip has dates and a minute-by-minute program, the invitation to Slovakia has no date. The pope has it from the president, from the Conference of Bishops of Slovakia, and from 6,109 people who signed the appeal by the Fides et Ratio Foundation, which we covered in detail in September. SITA ↗ Also read: In November the Pope Will Visit Three Countries in South America. A Visit to Slovakia Still Has No Confirmed Date

The surgery does not directly change any of that, but it shifts the context. If the South American trip is shortened or postponed due to recovery, the calendar of further trips will shift along with it, and Slovakia remains in it, for now, only as an invitation without a date.

Limits of This Overview

The Vatican has not disclosed whether the finding is malignant, so we do not know whether further treatment will follow the operation. All statements about the course of events come from a single source, namely the Holy See Press Office, and no independent medical assessment is available.

The comparison with Francis also has a limit. It involved a different organ, a different age, and a different condition, so his ten-week gap cannot be used to infer what gap Leo needs. And the program can be adjusted without canceling the trip altogether, for example by dropping individual stops, which the Vatican has done on previous trips.

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Illustrative photo: the main entrance of the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic in Rome, with the statue of John Paul II, the hospital where the procedure is to take place. Photo by Blackcat, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 it.