Pope Francis is recovering… what happens now?
Miles Pattenden• March 18, 2025
Catholics around the world will have been delighted at the news that Pope Francis is now recovering from his ailments. Progress has been slow, his doctors concede, but it seems to be measurable. No date has yet been set for him to leave Rome’s Gemelli hospital. Yet the presumption is certainly that he will do so. Given the touch-and-go nature of Francis’s condition during February, the sense of relief is palpable.
Francis’s illness catalysed a somewhat surreal experience for me as a papal historian. In my book Electing the Pope, I discussed at some length the complex economy of knowledge which has traditionally surrounded the pope’s health. Cardinals, ambassadors of Catholic powers, but also the Roman people themselves would go to extraordinary lengths to discover any fragment of information.
Had the pope appeared on Sunday? Could he walk unaided between basilicas? Were his family quietly boarding up his statutes or removing their treasured possessions from his palaces (either, potentially, in anticipation of the violent disorder of the Vacant See)?
The most extraordinary cases were those where political paymasters paid agents for insider information. The pope’s cook could be a useful informant, and his other familiars were too.
Strange then to see this process playing out during our own lives in real time. Vatican analysts and correspondents rooting out their anonymous sources. Cardinals no doubt also doing the same, though perhaps more discreetly. Detailed discussion of the smallest signs, such as what was said and not said in the Holy See Press Office’s daily bulletins. How little had actually changed in the last five hundred years.
On the other hand, the deep and, one might add, distasteful fakes of Francis lying prostrate in his hospital bed or, worse, on a catafalque are new. They add a new complexity to this age-old pastime of the papal death watch, for they could not have existed even at the time of John Paul II’s final illness.
Overall, however, the Vatican’s different agencies have done a remarkable job of transmitting information and countering obviously false rumour. Much of the credit for the transparency should go to Francis himself, who reportedly wanted a concerned public to understand his situation (and perhaps also to show that he has continued to be in charge throughout).
All this has been very professional. Yet Francis remains in hospital still, thirty-two days since his admission (at the time of writing). His is already one of the longest papal hospitalisations ever, second only to John Paul II’s recovery after the 1981 assassination attempt. The longer Francis remains at diminished capacity, the more questions will be raised. Can he discharge all the obligations of the pontifical office? What really are those obligations in the twenty-first century? What threats does a pope on the edge of incapacity pose to the Church? And, crucially, what risks arise from the fact that only the pope himself has the authority to decide these things?
Francis is clearly attuned to these questions. His energetic determination to receive visitors, and to continue to conduct Church business, even during his weakest moments, attests to that. His recent instruction signing off a three-year reform plan is bold. Above all, it sends a message that he has no intention of going anywhere. And, even if he does not live to see the plan’s conclusion, he will make it a major talking point in whatever conclave eventuates. Those who wish to succeed him will have to stake a view on it.
Will this strategy succeed? Only if enough of those around Rome who had assumed this will be the pope’s final year start to doubt that sufficiently to acquiesce to him again. The tragedy of the pope’s authority is that it declines steadily and constantly throughout every pontificate. As soon a majority of dissenters think they can ride it out until the next conclave, it is done.
So what will happen now? The first thing to acknowledge is that the dignity with which Francis has presented an example of suffering should have won him many admirers inside the Vatican and without. It certainly captured global media attention, if not quite at the level that John Paul II enjoyed those twenty years ago.
This papal “passiontide”, if we can call it that, must soon give way to concern over the papal predicament. One issue here is how the pope’s role has evolved. Public visibility is now an important part of the job. If Francis cannot be seen, and cannot bless babies or greet the sick and the marginalised, can he still do it effectively? The Vatican’s recently released photograph of him was telling in that it showed him only from an oblique angle. Is something being concealed?
Francis did also come troublingly close to needing full mechanical ventilation. He was only a step or two away from being placed in an induced coma. Catholics might well ask what would have happened then had that been judged medically necessary?
A presumption arises that Francis has left written instructions for such eventualities. He certainly hinted as much at the start of his pontificate. Yet few have seen these documents. They are not public so are they valid canonically? But who would challenge them and how might they do so? The Vatican’s leading figures ought to close ranks to enforce them. But is the feeling that they would do so realistic or complacent?
No doubt, those who would run the Church in the pope’s absence all want what is best for it and should rally round. But they do not necessarily agree on optimal outcomes, nor on what should be their forms of co-operation. The Catholic Church is, moreover, an organisation that operates across multiple jurisdictions. Not all judges will be inclined to assent that internal Church governance is simply a matter for Vatican sovereign decision-making.
That has already been shown to be the case even at a time when the Church has enjoyed a functioning and undisputed legal order. How confident are the cardinals that states could not make themselves more intrusive in the event of an authoritative vacuum of indefinite duration?
Again, these were the problems that preoccupied the finest minds amongst the medieval canonists. They gave us Clement V’s bull Ne Romani (1312), which established legal continuity following a pope’s death. Does the Church now need a new version of this document which establishes procedure for a papal incapacitation independent to a particular pope’s personal preferences?
As Catholics wish the Holy Father well, and a speedy ongoing recovery, they might reflect on this modern dilemma. The medical advances of the present age, which have done wonders for extending life, have introduced new complexities. Those complexities are sure to be ones on the minds of all present in that next conclave – whenever it eventually occurs.
(Candles and messages of healing for Pope Francis are laid at the statue of John Paul II outside the Gemelli hospital | Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP) (Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images)