Pope Leo XIV is back behind the Vatican walls. The 71-year-old left Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Saturday afternoon, just four days after surgeons removed part of his right lung to take out a cancerous tumour, and his motorcade rolled into Vatican City at 3:43 pm local time.
The release came earlier than planned. A stay until 20 October had originally been expected, but the pontiff picked up some of his work again on Thursday. On Saturday morning his personal physician Luigi Carbone and surgeon Stefano Margaritora reported that blood tests, a chest X-ray and a clinical check had cleared him to go, and the Holy See press office broke the news a few hours later.
Before leaving, Leo celebrated Mass in a room on the hospital’s tenth floor that had been prepared for the purpose. A crowd was waiting at the main entrance and cheered as he appeared. Leo greeted well-wishers one by one, lingering with a young woman who had a bandage on her arm and carried a little doll dressed as the pope, before smiling through the car window as he was driven off.
How much the American-born pope can take on in the coming weeks is still unclear, and nothing has been said publicly about his prognosis. His next public moment is set for Sunday, when he is due to recite the Angelus at noon from the papal apartment window above St Peter’s Square.
A bigger test is next month’s journey to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, which had looked uncertain since the diagnosis. Yet a day before his release the Holy See named the journalists cleared to join him on the flight, which suggests preparations are going ahead. Even from his hospital room Leo kept a full diary this week, including a phone call with Vladimir Putin about the humanitarian plight of the Ukrainian town of Oleshky and meetings with senior cardinals.
