Pope Francis takes meeting in hospital over candidates for sainthood
The audience occurred on Monday.
Pope Francis, who is in hospital with double pneumonia, was well enough to meet with the Vatican secretary of state and his deputy to approve new decrees for saints and call a formal meeting to set the dates for their canonisation, officials have said.
The audience, which occurred on Monday, signalled that the machinery of the Vatican is still grinding on and looking ahead even with Francis in hospital and doctors warning his prognosis is guarded.
The Vatican’s Tuesday noon bulletin announced that Francis had approved decrees for five people for beatification and two for canonisation.
The Vatican statement also said that during the audience with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and his deputy, Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, Francis had “decided to convene a consistory about the future canonisations”.
Such an audience and decision is par for the course when Francis is at the Vatican.
He regularly approves decrees from the Vatican’s saint-making office. But the forward-looking sense of the future consistory was significant, given his illness.
On Tuesday morning, the Vatican’s typically brief morning update said: “The pope slept well, all night.”
On Monday evening, doctors said he remained in critical condition with double pneumonia but reported a “slight improvement” in some laboratory results.
In the most upbeat bulletin in days, the Vatican said Francis had resumed work from his hospital room, calling a parish in Gaza City that he has kept in touch with since the war there began.
After night fell, thousands of faithful gathered in a rain-soaked St Peter’s Square for the first of a nightly ritual recitation of the Rosary.
The prayer evoked the 2005 vigils when St John Paul II was dying in the Apostolic Palace, but many of those on hand said they were praying for Francis’ recovery.
“We came to pray for the pope, that he may recover soon, for the great mission he’s sharing with his message of peace,” said Hatzumi Villanueva, from Peru, who praised Francis’ empathy for migrants.
Standing on the same stage where Francis usually presides, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said that ever since Francis had been admitted to hospital, a chorus of prayers for his recovery had swelled up from around the world.
“Starting this evening, we want to unite ourselves publicly to this prayer here, in his house,” Mr Parolin said, praying that Francis “in this moment of illness and trial” would recover quickly.
The vigil was to continue on Tuesday night, presided over by another senior Vatican official, Cardinal Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, who heads the office responsible for the Catholic Church in the developing world.
The Argentine pope, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, has been in hospital since February 14 at Rome’s Gemelli hospital and doctors have said his condition is touch-and-go, given his age, fragility and pre-existing lung disease before the pneumonia set in.
But in Monday’s update, they said he had not had any more respiratory crises since Saturday, and the flow and concentration of supplemental oxygen has been slightly reduced.
The slight kidney insufficiency detected on Sunday was not causing alarm at the moment, doctors said, while saying his prognosis remained guarded.
