The overnight “post-operative process is regular. Routine follow-up examinations are good,” said Holy See Press Office director Matteo Bruni.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Pope Francis' hospital stay is proceeding as expected.
Last night, according to the director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, “His Holiness Pope Francis had a good night's rest.”
“This morning he had breakfast, read some newspapers and got up to walk,” read the press release. “The post-operative process is regular. Routine follow-up examinations are good.”
It is too soon to know when the pontiff will return to the Vatican, or if he will deliver next Sunday’s Angelus to St Peter's Square or from the window of Rome’s Gemelli University Hospital.
John Paul II set a precedent on 17 May 1981 when he taped the prayer and looked out of the hospital window to say hello after he was shot in an attack against him.
That was not the Holy Father’s only stay at the hospital, so much so that on Sunday, 13 October 1996 – during his sixth stay at Gemelli Hospital, this time for an appendicitis operation – he described the facility as the “third Vatican”.
“The first Vatican is St Peter's,” he said from the window of his room, “the second is Castel Gandolfo, and the third is now this hospital.”
In the ranking of papal sees, the Gemelli University Hospital took the place of the Lateran, where the Pope has his chair as bishop of Rome and where he resided for centuries in the Middle Ages.
The last Angelus from the Gemelli was delivered on 13 March 2005, a few days before 2 April, when John Paul II was able to return to his “Father's house”, as he himself put it.