The Holy See has finalized this Monday the schedule for the hospitalization of Leo XIV. According to the director of the Press Office, Matteo Bruni, admission to the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome is scheduled for late morning on Tuesday, October 13. Bruni clarified that the nodule was detected during routine check-ups and maintained the forecast, announced on Sunday, of a postoperative stay of approximately one week.
It was the Pontiff himself who announced the operation at the end of the Angelus on October 11. Before the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square, he explained that doctors had detected a nodule localized in the lung at a very early stage, and that he had decided to follow their advice to proceed with surgery. The Holy See has not yet announced the time of the operation. According to Vatican correspondent Francesco Capozza, it is unclear whether it will take place on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning.
Tagle to preside over the Mass for the tenth anniversary of Amoris laetitia
The admission coincides with the final stretch of the meeting that, from October 7 to 14, brings together in the Paul VI Hall the heads of the Eastern Catholic Churches and the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Amoris laetitia, the post-synodal apostolic exhortation of Francis on love in the family. Leo XIV maintained all his audiences on Monday morning, but will not attend the afternoon sessions.
Jesuit Giacomo Costa, responsible for the methodology of the meeting and consultant to the General Secretariat of the Synod, acknowledged in a press conference that the hospitalization requires introducing “some changes also in the way of conceiving the development of our meeting.” The most visible affects the closing Mass, scheduled for 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday the 14th in St. Peter’s Square, which the Pope himself was to preside over. Leo XIV has entrusted the celebration to Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, whose election as dean of the College of Cardinals was approved on October 8. The Mass will include special prayers for the health of the Holy Father and for families.
During the morning, part of the Italian press had pointed to Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life and delegate president of the meeting, as the celebrant. Costa’s announcement rules out that hypothesis.
The Pope reserves the floor on the final report
The second novelty has greater scope. The program foresaw that the Synthesis Report, whose revision is presided over by Farrell, would be presented and debated in the final session on Wednesday, delivered to the Pope, and made public afterward. According to Costa, Leo XIV has now requested that it not be published: he wishes to receive the document, review the materials when he leaves the hospital, and express his own opinion. Costa presented the decision as a sign of the Pope’s will to listen and not let the meeting pass without further ado.
An exhortation still under discussion
Amoris laetitia, published in April 2016 after the synods on the family in 2014 and 2015, has been one of the most debated documents of Francis’s pontificate. The controversy focused mainly on its chapter VIII and on divergent interpretations regarding access to the sacraments for divorced persons who have remarried civilly. Those divergences led that same year to Cardinals Brandmüller, Burke, Caffarra, and Meisner to raise five dubia, which never received a formal response.
With Leo XIV’s decision, the conclusions of the meeting will not circulate as a public text before the Pontiff has examined them. For the moment, the Holy See has not specified whether the report will be published later or in what form the Pope will pronounce himself.