Just hours after a Vatican news conference confirming Pope Francis’ trip to Dubai this weekend for a United Nations climate summit, the Vatican announced Tuesday that it has been canceled upon medical advice due to an ongoing infection causing lung inflammation.
Pope Francis used his third day at Rome’s Gemelli hospital to visit children hospitalized in the oncology ward and to confer the sacrament of baptism on a tiny infant named Miguel Angel.
The Vatican announced on Friday, March 31, that after spending two days in the hospital, and given his most recent test results, Pope Francis is doing well and is expected to return to the Vatican in time for Holy Week.
Catholic Church leaders around the country offered prayers for Pope Francis following the Vatican’s March 29 announcement that he would be hospitalized in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for a few days to treat a respiratory infection.
Pope Francis, Sunday, expressed closeness to Cuba in his traditional noontime Angelus address, and he voiced the hope that the country will become more just and fraternal. While those words may elicit only quiet reaction within Cuba itself, a band of Cuban expatriates who gathered in St. Peter’s Square didn’t disguise their anguish.
