The Vatican’s late-night bulletin on Tuesday carried two messages at once. The operation on Pope Leo XIV went exactly as planned, with no complications. And the growth his doctors had been worried about is cancer: an adenocarcinoma, the most common kind found in the lungs, identified by pathologists while the 71-year-old was still on the table.
Surgeons at the Gemelli clinic in Rome, led by thoracic chief Stefano Margaritora, took out the entire bottom section of his right lung through a camera-guided keyhole approach. Removing the entire lobe, rather than only the nodule, is meant to leave no diseased tissue behind. He spent about three hours in the operating suite, half of that under the knife. Afterwards the pope came round normally, was wheeled back to the papal suite on the tenth floor and, according to the Holy See, asked for something to eat.
Leo had broken the news himself at Sunday’s Angelus, telling pilgrims that routine checks had turned up a small nodule found unusually early. Cardinal Pietro Parolin admitted he had not seen it coming but described the pontiff as “very serene” beforehand. Prayers were held in the hospital chapel, while parishes in his native Chicago and in Chiclayo, Peru, where he once served as bishop, celebrated Masses for him.
Specialists consider the outlook favourable when such tumours are found this early. A Seattle lung-screening doctor told CNN that more than 80 percent of patients with the earliest stage remain disease-free after five years. Detailed laboratory work on the removed tissue over the next few days should show whether any follow-up therapy is required.
Leo is expected to stay in hospital for about a week, and his public schedule is cleared until Oct. 20. A cardinal who saw him recently said he still intends to travel to South America, with stops in Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, in November.
