Pope’s Condition ‘Complex’, Hospital Stay Extended – Vatican

Published

8 months ago

February 17, 2025

Pope Francis did some work during his fourth day in hospital Monday, but the 88-year-old faces a “complex clinical picture” that will require a longer than expected stay, the Vatican said.

The head of the Catholic Church was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Friday with bronchitis, the latest of a series of health issues in recent years.

In a statement earlier Monday, the Vatican said tests had confirmed “a polymicrobial infection of the respiratory tract that has led to a further change in treatment”.

“All the tests carried out until now are indicative of a complex clinical picture that will require adequate hospitalisation,” it said.

In an early evening update, it said his clinical condition was unchanged, he continued to be fever-free and was continuing the unspecified treatment.

“This morning he received the Eucharist and subsequently dedicated himself to some work and reading texts,” the update said.

“Pope Francis is touched by the numerous messages of affection and closeness he continues to receive,” it added.

After initially cancelling events through Monday, the Vatican said the pope’s weekly Wednesday audience would not go ahead either.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni had earlier told reporters that the pope was in “good humour”, had rested well overnight, had eaten breakfast and read the newspapers.

A source in the pope’s entourage had also insisted there was no alarm within the Vatican.

Francis was admitted after a “very busy” two weeks, during which “he was weakened”, the source told AFP, but added: “There is no alarmism.”

A Vatican source told AFP the pope was receiving oxygen.

Yet the news of the more complex situation raises fresh concerns about the Argentine pontiff, who has suffered increasing health issues in recent years.

– Difficulty breathing –

In the days before his admission, Francis had admitted to difficulty breathing and had asked aides several times to read his speeches aloud on his behalf.

At his weekly general audience last Wednesday, he said he “cannot yet” read his own speeches, adding with a smile: “I hope that next time I can.”

But he had continued taking meetings, including one with the prime minister of Slovakia on Friday morning, shortly before he headed to hospital.

Francis had part of one of his lungs removed as a young man and has been particularly susceptible to respiratory infections.

He pulled out of a Good Friday event last year after catching what the Vatican called a “light flu”, but went on to lead Easter services as planned.

A year earlier, in March 2023, Francis was admitted to hospital for three nights with bronchitis, which was cured with antibiotics.

The pope also underwent a hernia operation in June 2023 and in 2021 underwent surgery for a type of diverticulitis, an inflammation of pockets that develop in the lining of the intestine.

He has been using a wheelchair since 2022 because of persistent knee pain and uses a cane during rare moments standing up.

Francis has also fallen a couple of times in the past few months, bruising his forearm in January and sporting a large bruise on his right jaw in December, caused by toppling from his bed.

– ‘Distant possibility’ –

Yet despite his health troubles, Francis remains an active pontiff.

In September 2024, he completed a four-nation Asia-Pacific tour, the longest of his papacy by duration and distance.

And he has a packed schedule, from daily private audiences to the weekly Angelus prayer on a Sunday, and the Wednesday public audience.

He followed Sunday’s mass this week on television from hospital and sent a written address for the Angelus.

“I would have liked to be among you but, as you know, I am here at the Gemelli Hospital because I still need some treatment for my bronchitis,” Francis wrote.

The Jesuit has left open the option of resigning, like his predecessor Benedict XVI, if he became unable to carry out his duties.

But in a memoir published last year, the pope wrote that he did “not have any cause serious enough to make me think of resigning”.

Resignation is a “distant possibility” that would be justified only in the event of “a serious physical impediment”, he wrote.

UK Police Hunt Asylum Seeker Mistakenly Freed For Sex Offence

Published

2 hours ago

October 25, 2025

Editor

UK police were still hunting Saturday for an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender whose crimes sparked a wave of anti-immigration protests and who was accidentally released from prison.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled” by Friday’s “totally unacceptable” error that saw 38-year-old Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.

“This man must be caught and deported for his crimes,” the UK leader added.

Kebatu had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service mistake occurred.

Kebatu’s high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.

Justice Secretary David Lammy said late Friday night that Kebatu was “at large in London” after he was seen boarding a train to the capital in Chelmsford, eastern England.

Essex Police, which is leading the search with the help of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Saturday that “inquiries are continuing at pace this morning to locate and arrest” him.

“Officers worked throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage,” the force added, noting “it is not lost on us that this situation is concerning to people”.

The Telegraph reported he was wrongly categorised as a prisoner due to be released on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.

The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told Sky News that “the justice system has let us down”.

Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.

He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.

At the time, Kebatu was staying at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.

Headline

UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

Published

2 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”

Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.

In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.

“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.

Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.

NDLEA intercepts drugs hidden in snails, others meant for UK, US, DRC
Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations. Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.

“Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”

In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.

“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”

Headline

King Charles To Pray With Pope Leo In Historic Vatican Visit

Published

3 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

King Charles III will on Thursday meet Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and make history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the pontiff for five centuries.

The 76-year-old monarch, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, arrived in Rome on Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” state visit.

It will be Charles’s first meeting with Leo since the US-born pope took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Pope Francis.

The royals will arrive at the Apostolic Palace at 10.45am (0845 GMT) for private talks with the pope.

The king and queen will then join an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Pope Leo and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.

Broadcast live by Vatican media, it will be the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.

Triggered by the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch head of the separate Church of England.

Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, will be centred on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause championed by Charles.

It will bring together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that from Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.

– Schism –

The religious break between London and Rome remains, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.

In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.

The law was changed in 2013 so that marrying a Catholic would no longer disqualify someone from becoming monarch — although they still have to be a Protestant themselves.

The rapprochement is important because “Anglicanism was born in reaction to the Catholic Church, and therefore in opposition,” said Hyacinthe Destivelle, a French priest and member of the Vatican’s dicastery (department) for promoting Christian unity.

This is no longer the case, despite “theological differences in recent decades”, he told AFP.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England — the mother church of the world’s 85-million-strong Anglican community — ordains women and allows priests to marry.

Sarah Mullally was recently named the first female archbishop of Canterbury, the Church’s top cleric, although she has yet to officially take up her post.

– Royal Confrater –

Charles and Queen Camilla are also set to take part in a service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, one of four major papal basilicas, which has historic links with the English crown.

The king will be made a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica and presented with a specially designed seat for use by him and future British monarchs.

Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death.

The king sent his son and heir, William, to the funeral and his brother, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.

The visit comes as the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, a year-long event held every 25 years, which has drawn millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.

It also comes at a delicate time for Charles, following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles. He had already stepped back from royal duties in 2019.

AFP