The Pope appears so big in everyday Italian life that there are many expressions that even shed light on a dark event like his death.
“A Pope dies, they do another,” says one and suggests how life continues.
But the one who hears most often when a Pope is sick is perhaps the darkest: “The Pope is fine until it is dead.”
This has done the round because Pope Francis stays in the Gemelli Hospital in Rome, fights against pneumonia and a complex respiratory infection.
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While the Vatican provided twice daily updates about his condition and the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that during the visit last week they had “as usual”, all possible reports and non-in reference to Francis’ health.
You have taken on your own life in times of chat groups, conspiracy theories and internet memes – not to mention the multi -year Roman fixation of the Pope and which could fulfill him.
The conclave Effect
It does not help that the Oscar-nominated film conclave Is in the cinemas and has made everyone an expert for the Arcans rules and spectacular drama, which is involved in a papal election. Or that Francis recently expanded the term of the Dean of the College of Cardinal, instead of finding someone who will fill out a key job at the next papal transition. Or that with 88 he is one of the oldest popes ever.
Francis still has opportunities to survive Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903 at 93. However, he is on the right track to reach or exceed Pope Gregor XII, perhaps known as the youngest Pope, who has resigned until Pope Benedict XVI. 2013. Gregory was 88 years old when he stepped down in 1415 to end the western Schisma, according to the Catholic online resource hierarchy.
Francis has often said that he would also consider to withdraw if his health cannot continue, although he recently said that a Pope’s order was for life.
The Vatican correspondents are usually preparing for upcoming papal trips at this time of year, but no one has been confirmed so far. Instead, they prepare stories between medical updates that look back on their life, only in the event.
“I think the dictum of a Pope is fine until it is dead.” It is a very Roman way of speaking that on the one hand represents the traditional skepticism of the Romans and Italians, on the other hand an information lie. “
The Vatican has not admitted to any member of the Francis medical team in front of the camera or took over detailed updates of his health, and no photos of him have been published since February 14th.
Video drives rumors
But to understand how intertwined the Pope is in Italian life, you only have to look at a different tradition that is observed by Italians: the annual Sanremo Song Festival, a one -week series on RAI television, in which the viewers for their preferred ascending Singers are right, Kitschy, sometimes Bawdy competition, appear in performance.
When it was broadcast last week, it made even more headlines than usual, because Francis-before sick of bronchitis, but not yet appeared in a prepared video, a publicity coup for Sanremo and a premiere for the papacy.
When the popular Italian blog Dagospia later claimed that the video was made for another event almost a year earlier, the nearby hysteria broke out among the Vatican observers. The obvious deception indicated that Francis’ recent illness was much worse than she seemed, and asked questions about the solidity of the papacy when an old video had been published without his knowledge.
As it turned out, Dagospia was wrong. The video was legitimate, recently and recorded for Sanremo. But it was true that Francis’ bronchitis was indeed much worse. Until the end of the week, he was hospitalized with a lung infection, which turned into pneumonia.
The episode underlined the truism that the papacy is a question of public knowledge, interest and the debate and that speculating on the current health of the Pope and the next is a national pastime.
“I am certainly very, very concerned,” said Maurizio di Folco, who was treated in the same hospital on Tuesday. “I wish him a quick recovery and we pray deep for him. A very good Pope. A great Pope! We hope he will be with us for a long time.”
White smoke rises in the Vatican when Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli is elected Pope.
Conservative critics weigh
But elsewhere, Francis’ right critics are alarming and completely undisputed stories about his condition. Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a Francis -Nemesis excommunicated last year, revived his conspiracy theory about the legitimacy of Francis’ elections in 2013 and asked the CIA to examine what he claims to choose a “deep state obligation”.
Francis knows that well.
“Some wanted me dead,” he said in 2021 to the Slovakian Jesuit priests and referred to what he had learned for the intestinal operation this year. “I know that there were even meetings among the priests who thought that the Pope was in a worse form than what was said. They prepare the conclave.”
It is a bad taste of discussing them publicly who is up or down in the papal missions of a future conclave, let alone start planning one. But privately Rome is mostly with such conversations. Taxi drivers chat with passengers, doctors with patients and butchers with customers.
Candidates must be male and a baptized Catholic. And although it is not an explicit requirement, almost every Pope was a cardinal before they were elected.
The Pope is selected by 120 cardinals who have to talk at the time of death or withdrawal of the previous Pope under 80.
Francis is stuck at the moment. The bulletin on Thursday said that his clinical condition was “slightly improved” and his heart worked well. He opened in an armchair early and worked with adjutants.
“There is a greater degree of transparency, but even that is not complete,” said Christopher Bellitto, professor of church history at Kean University in New Jersey. “Certainly everyone said with aging parents and grandparents:” This is pneumonia “before the Vatican did.”
