Pope Francis and the mystery of his ‘missing lung’

Pope Francis passed away on Monday at the age of 88, Vatican Camerlengo Cardinal Kevin Ferrell announced earlier today. The pontiff, who had been ailing for some time, was a man of stories. One such story surrounding him was that of his ‘missing lung’.

Back in 2013, rumours spread like wildfire that Pope Francis lived most of his adult life with just one lung. Much earlier, in 2015 when he was considered to be a potential successor to Pope John Paul II, reports from around the world, including those that appeared in newspapers based in Argentina—where he was born—stated that Bergoglio’s entire lung was removed. But this was far from the truth.

Yes, Pope Francis had a lung surgery. But the operation only removed the upper part of his right lung. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson then, went on record to say, “I confirm that many, many years ago he had an operation in which part of a lung was removed.” Lombardi assured that Pope Francis, who was 76 at the time, remained in good health and the missing part of the lung was not an issue to the papal leader.

More than the missing part of the lung, the quest for any records of Pope Francis himself mentioning it seemed harder to find. There were just two mentions—one to journalists Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti, who also wrote his authorised biography El Jesuita.

Another book Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio also mentioned this condition. It portrayed Pope Francis as a 21-year-old seminarian who fell feverish and had “near death” symptoms for days. “The doctors were worried. Finally, they diagnosed a severe lung infection. Because they found three cysts, when his condition was stabilized and a prudent amount of time had passed, he had to undergo the removal of the upper part of his right lung.”

“Since then, he’s dealt with a pulmonary deficiency that, while it doesn’t limit him seriously, it marks a human limit. Surely, that episode strengthened his understanding of what’s really important in life.”

Then, the pope’s last surviving family member in the first-degree, his younger sister Maria Elena Bergoglio, told AP that the surgery led to the removal of “a pretty big part” of one lung. However, the diminished lung capacity that came with it did not seem to bother Pope Francis much, at least not as much as other conditions that come with old age, like lower back pain.

 

World