“PRAYING FOR HIM”
Francis, who had a part of a lung eliminated as a younger man, had been breathless and struggled to learn his texts within the days main as much as his admission.
On Feb 22, he suffered a “extended asthmatic respiratory disaster” and on February 28 had “an remoted disaster of bronchospasm” – a tightening of the muscle groups that line the airways within the lungs.
On Monday, Francis “skilled two episodes of acute respiratory failure, attributable to a big accumulation of endobronchial mucus and consequent bronchospasm”, based on the Vatican.
Acute respiratory failure, which may be life-threatening, happens when the lungs can’t move sufficient oxygen into the blood or when carbon dioxide builds up within the physique.
Francis is in a particular papal suite on the hospital with its personal chapel. His medical crew has not commented on the size of his keep, nor how lengthy his restoration might take.
He has had only a few guests. Amongst them is Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, the Vatican’s quantity three, who visited on Sunday.
In an interview printed Wednesday, Parra gave no particulars in any respect about how Francis was, simply saying he was “carrying in his physique indicators of fragility and sickness, like each human being”.
Within the meantime, the Vatican has been plunged into uncertainty, officers persevering with their work whereas ready anxiously for every medical bulletin.
On Tuesday, Catholics from Argentina gathered in entrance of Gemelli hospital and positioned among the many candles a blue and white “Our Woman of Lujan”, a celebrated Sixteenth-century statue of the Virgin Mary.
Francis used to wish to Our Woman of Lujan earlier than changing into pope, when he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
“He is aware of that the entire Church is praying for him, and our prayer is a power that he receives from the Holy Spirit,” Fernando Laguna, a priest from the Argentine parish in Rome, advised AFP.
