Pope Francis’s primary doctor during his hospitalization has said it was the pope himself who chose to keep trying different therapies when his life was most at risk, and has attributed the pontiff’s “miraculous” recovery, in part, to prayer.
Newsdesk (26/03/2025 09:00, Gaudium Press) Speaking to Italian journalist Fiorenza Sarzanini with Italy’s newspaper of record, Corriere della Sera, Doctor Sergio Alfieri said the night of Feb. 28 was “the worst” night of the pope’s recent ordeal.
That day the pope had experienced a bronchospasm, when the muscles lining the bronchi, the tubes that connect the windpipe to the lungs, constrict and narrow, limiting the amount of oxygen the body receives.
On that occasion, the pope inhaled his own vomit, which then had to be suctioned out of his respiratory tract. He was put on non-invasive mechanical ventilation for the first time following this episode.
Alfieri, director of the medical surgical department of Rome’s Gemelli Hospital and head of the pope’s medical team there, said, “We were coming out of the hardest period, while Pope Francis was eating he had a regurgitation and inhaled.”
“It was the second truly critical moment because in these cases – if not promptly assisted – you risk sudden death in addition to lung complications, which were already the most compromised organs. It was terrible, we really didn’t think he was going to make it,” he said.
Alfieri said that night was the first time since the pope had been admitted Feb. 14 with a severe polymicrobial respiratory infection and bilateral pneumonia that he saw “tears in the eyes of some of the people around him.”
“People who, I understood during this time of hospitalization, really loved him, like a father. We were all aware that the situation had worsened further and there was the risk he might not make it,” Alfieri said, saying doctors then had a choice to make.
“We had to choose whether to stop and let him go, or force it and try all the drugs and therapies possible, running the very high risk of damaging other organs. In the end, we took this path,” he said, saying it was the pope himself who made the call.
The pope is always the one who decides what course to take, Alfieri said, saying Francis in this case had delegated all of his medical decisions to his personal healthcare assistant Massimiliano Strappetti, “who knows the pope’s wishes perfectly.”
In the end, the decision was to “Try everything, don’t give up. That’s what we all thought too, and no one gave up,” he said.
Alfieri said the pope, in addition to having a strong heart, “has incredible resources. I think the fact that the whole world prayed for him also contributed to this.”
“There is a scientific publication according to which prayers give strength to the patient, in this case the whole world praying. I can say that twice the situation was lost and then it happened like a miracle,” he said.
Alfieri described Pope Francis as “a very collaborative patient” who underwent his various therapies “without ever complaining.”
Pope Francis, 88, returned to his Vatican residence Sunday, March 23, after spending 38 days in the Gemelli Hospital. Given his age and underlying chronic respiratory problems, the pope, who had part of one lung removed due to pneumonia as a young Jesuit, is at increased risk for respiratory illness.
Alfieri said the pope had been sick for several days before finally deciding to be admitted to the Gemelli Hospital for treatment, having wanted to maintain his schedule of events for the ongoing Jubilee of Hope.
“When he began to breathe with increasing difficulty, he understood that he could not wait any longer. He arrived at Gemelli in great pain, but perhaps also a little annoyed. In a few hours, however, he regained his good mood,” Alfieri said.
He explained that the balancing act for doctors was delicate, as they had to strike the right balance between drug therapy to fight the pope’s infection, which put his other organs at risk of sepsis, and cortisone therapy for his pneumonia, which lowered his body’s immune defenses and ability to fight his infection.
“For days we risked damage to the kidneys” and other organs, he said, “but we went forward, and his body responded to the treatment and the pulmonary infection eased.”
Alfieri said the pope was always conscious and alert, even during his worst moments, including after his first bronchospasm on Feb. 28.
“That night was terrible, he knew, like us, that he might not survive the night. We saw a man who was suffering. But from the first day he told us to tell him the truth and he wanted us to convey the truth about his condition,” Alfieri said.
It was this constant awareness, Alfieri believes, that “was also the reason that kept him alive.”
He reflected on the pope’s good humor throughout his ordeal, once responding to Alfieri’s greeting, “good morning, Holy Father,” by saying, “good morning, holy son!”
“He has a tired body, but the head is that of a 50-year-old. He also demonstrated it in the last week of his hospitalization,” Alfieri said.
As soon as Pope Francis began to feel better, he asked to go around the ward, he said, saying the staff offered to close the doors to the other patients’ rooms, but the pope wanted them to stay open, and “sought the gaze of the other patients” as he moved around the hall.
One day the pope left his room at least five times, Alfieri said, and recalled how the pope also bought the hospital staff pizza to celebrate the 12th anniversary of his election to the papacy on March 13.
“It was a continuous improvement, and I understood that he had decided to return to Santa Marta when, one morning, he asked me, ‘I’m still alive, when are we going home?’”
That night, March 22, it was announced that the pope would be discharged, and the next morning is when Pope Francis made his appearance on the balcony of the Gemelli Hospital and waived to the crowd below, pointing out a woman carrying a bouquet of yellow flowers.
“To me it seemed like a clear sign to say, I’m back and I’m at the top of my game,” Alfieri said.
He said it was the pope himself who chose what information to share with the public about his health. Doctors would send a summary of the medical information to Francis’s secretaries, who added other details and submitted the statement for the pope’s approval.
“Nothing was ever changed or omitted,” Alfieri said, saying the pope was also aware that other people thought he was likely dying.
Francis, he said, “was always informed of what was happening and always reacted with his usual irony, responding often to questions on how he was doing with, “I’m still alive.”
Alfieri said that personally the most significant moment for him of the pope’s 5-week hospital stay was “When, in the most difficult period, he held my hand for a few minutes as if seeking comfort.”
Another special moment, he said, was “When I saw him leave the room on the tenth floor of the Gemelli dressed in white. It is the emotion of seeing the man become pope again.”
Pope Francis is now observing a two-month period of rest and has been advised to avoid meetings with crowds and with children, due to the risk of exposure to new infections. Out of medical caution, his April 8 meeting with King Charles and Queen Camilla has been indefinitely postponed.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Crux Now
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