The Pope's Health
Francis was hospitalized for 38 days at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome for treatment of a double pneumonia. Thanks be to God, he got better and returned to the Vatican, to his usual place in Casa Santa Marta.
I have prayed a lot for the Pope, for the health of his body and soul. In the present life, body and soul are intimately associated. As Aristotle taught, “the soul is the form of the body.” In a Sunday Angelus address, Francis invited to live Lent “as a period of healing” that he is experiencing “in body and soul.” The fragility of the Vicar of Christ, naked when he left the Gemelli, in full view of everyone, barely able to raise his arms, with sunken eyes, a swollen face and visible signs that he was having trouble breathing, constitutes - as he himself said - “an important lesson both for older adults and for young people, which must be accepted, because it is part of the human condition.” If young people do not understand that they too are fragile, they become closed in on themselves. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, added, referring to the Pope: “It is fundamental to his ministry of inclusion that he preaches against treating marginalized people as disposable."
The soul of a pope is especially inscrutable. First of all, it is the soul of a human person, with his thoughts and feelings. In the case of Francis, he carries the burden of his formation in the Society of Jesus, where he was Provincial Superior and at the end of that period, his victims (I apologize for using this term) banished him to Cordoba. I was bishop several months before him, auxiliary to Cardinal Quarracino. When he was elected, I called him to Cordoba to congratulate him; then he told me: “the Cardinal pulled me out of twenty meters deep”. I was the neighborhood Vicar for Belgrano, and he was the Vicar for Flores. Then he was Vicar General and Coadjutor. Upon the Cardinal's death, he assumed as Archbishop of Buenos Aires and was created Cardinal. After the resignation of Benedict XVI, he was elected Pope. The health of the soul of a Supreme Pontiff consists in taking charge of Tradition.
The current Pontiff, as I have already written in other interventions, is an enemy of Tradition and an enemy of those he considers traditionalists. The health of his soul is failing and is no longer easy to cure. His days are, more than ever, in the hands of God, and it is likely that he will continue to speak about human things, as a “global leader,” which journalists consider him to be; he reaches the hearts of the faithful when he exhorts them to the love of Jesus and Mary, as is the office of a Pope.
In the history of the Church, the figure of the Bishop of Rome has changed according to the circumstances of the times, and has often acquired a political value of the first magnitude. However, the most valid and intimate value remains that of the continuity with the person of Peter. Perhaps the political value of the Pope depends, in reality, on his status as the Successor of Peter; in Christian times, it earned him recognition by kings and emperors. But in today's world, his figure cannot mimic that of a leader of globalization; Jesus' command remains that, until he returns, all peoples - panta ta ethnē - should receive the Good News, the Gospel.
