Pope Leo XIV’s cancer diagnosis sows uncertainty

VATICAN CITY (AP) — When Pope Leo XIV was elected after the painful finale of Pope Francis’ pontificate, it was hoped that a younger, healthier pope would be able to guide the Catholic Church for a time before age and illness slowed him down.

Leo’s lung cancer diagnosis announced Tuesday cast a question mark over this scenario and over his pontificate. Already, the president of Peru suggests to Leo next trip to Latin America it may need to be changed.

The Vatican said Thursday that the pope spent a peaceful second night at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, where he is expected to recover for about a week.

“He got out of bed and had breakfast,” the Vatican said in a brief statement.

Vatican watchers say the 71-year-old’s diagnosis could have other unintended effects, not all of them negative. This could push Leo to accelerate his own agenda, which so far has been slow and deliberate. It could also galvanize support for him, strengthening his efforts to unify the fractured Catholic Church.

And most poignantly for his own ministry, the diagnosis placed Leo squarely among the “fragile” and “vulnerable” who became his focus. In his preaching, writing, and interactions with ordinary worshipers, the wounded take center stage.

“There is something really beautiful about even the most powerful person in the Church being broken,” said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, an associate professor of theology at Fordham University. “He was so eloquent about how our fragility is also a source of our strength.”

The relatively young pope was chosen last year

Leo was 69 when he was elected in 2025, relatively young compared to the two popes who immediately preceded him.

Pope Francis was 76 when he was elected in 2013 and already had part of a lung removed when he was young. Francis battled breathing and mobility issues throughout his pontificate and died in 2025 after a long hospitalization for double pneumonia.

Pope Benedict XVI was 78 years old when he was elected in 2005 and retired after eight years because he simply couldn’t take it anymore.

Leo was elected largely because he was seen as someone who would stick around long enough to stabilize and unify the Church after Francis’ turbulent papacy, and put the Vatican’s finances in order, in particular. He brought youthful vigor to the papacy, climbing the stairs of St. Peter’s Square and setting off weekly into the countryside to play tennis and swim.

“It’s a big question mark over the investment that many people have made during this pontificate: an emotional investment, a political investment, even a financial investment,” said Massimo Faggioli, a theologian at Leo’s alma mater, Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

He noted that Leo became a powerful counterweight to Trump the American administration in preaching a message of peace while the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran. He became a respected moral authority on the need to guarantee artificial intelligence.

And yet, “even the pope has the ‘emperor of diseases’ – cancer,” he said.

But assuming Leo makes a full recovery – and oncologists say his type of lung cancer has the best prognosis — Leo could emerge even stronger as a global figure.

“The survivor mystique is very strong in our culture,” Faggioli said.

Doctors said Wednesday that his recovery was progressing normally. He walked around his hospital room, celebrated Mass and did respiratory physiotherapy while his well-wishers outside said the rosary, praying for his recovery.

“He was always very serene, kind and cheerful, and he did not lose this attitude even if the news was a surprise,” said Tiziano Perrini, a Roman who came to Gemelli hospital on Wednesday to pray for the pope. “So my perception hasn’t changed at all; in fact, maybe it brings us closer to him.”

A recent visit to Lourdes is now seen in a different light

But if the future is uncertain, Leo can draw inspiration from the recent past to help him get through it.

During his visit to France from September 25 to 28, Léon followed in the footsteps of millions of pilgrims who flock to the sanctuary in Lourdes every year to drink its spring water and pray for miraculous cures for all their ailments.

The Vatican did not say when Leo learned that doctors suspected he had a cancerous mass in his lungs. Before Tuesday’s operation, he underwent a series of pre-operative tests, including a biopsy under general anesthesia during a separate, secret hospital visit and a PET scan.

Some suggest that Leo might have known something even before leaving for France and that he scheduled the operation for Tuesday – usually his day off – “because he wanted to keep the commitments he had made as much as possible,” said Giovanni Maria Vian, former editor of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.

All this makes Leo’s visit to Lourdes all the more significant, if he then had the impression that he was also among the sick.

Leon arrived at the sanctuary on the evening of September 26 and immediately went to the Grotto of Apparitions where alleged visions of the Virgin Mary were reported more than a century ago. He performed the “three gestures” of the pilgrim of Lourdes in search of healing: he drank from its sources, lit a candle and touched the rock.

The next day, he celebrated mass in front of 150,000 people, many of them sick, denounced laws authorizing medical assistance in dying and threw himself into a crowd of people in wheelchairs. After a grueling and seemingly struggling day, Leo walked among the sick carrying a torch in an emotional torchlight procession at night.

Leo told reporters on his way home from France that he had witnessed “almost miracles” in Lourdes “walking with, accompanying so many sick and suffering people and seeing how the grace of God’s presence manifests itself in different ways, touches people’s hearts, transforms their lives.”

He did not include himself in their ranks, but he learned the lesson of Lourdes.

“Being in a place, especially like Lourdes, where people are looking for something much deeper and understanding that their life, even in the midst of illness, disability or pain of all kinds, their life has meaning,” he said.

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AP visual journalist Silvia Stellacci contributed to this report.

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