Pope Francis has appointed a nurse from Vatican health services to be his “personal medical assistant”, the Vatican said on Thursday, in an indication that the pontiff accepts he will need more care as he grows older.
A statement identified the assistant as Massimiliano Strappetti, who until now has been coordinator of nurses and health facilities at the Vatican, a sovereign state surrounded by Rome.
The position of “personal medical assistant” did not previously exist in this papacy, although Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005, had several medical care providers in the later years of his life.
Francisco already has a personal physician, a specialist in geriatrics at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome, where he underwent intestinal surgery a year ago. This was the first time the 85-year-old pontiff has been hospitalized since his election in 2013.
Last year, Francis joked in an interview that it was Strappetti who “saved my life” by convincing him that he could no longer put off the surgery.
The porridge suffered from a severe narrowing of the colon caused by diverticulitis, or the formation of small pouches protruding from the intestinal wall.
In recent months, Francis has had to use a wheelchair, cane or walker because of knee pain caused by a small fracture and an inflamed ligament.
Speaking to reporters on the plane returning from a trip to Canada on Saturday, he said his advanced age and difficulty walking had ushered in a new, slower phase of his papacy.
“I don’t think I can continue to travel at the same pace as before,” he said.
“I think at my age and with this limitation I have to preserve a little [minha força] to be able to serve the Church or decide to leave,” Francis said.
The pontiff said he preferred not to have a knee operation because he didn’t want a repeat of the negative long-term side effects of the anesthesia he suffered after last year’s bowel surgery.
“But I will try to continue traveling to be close to people because it is a way of serving”, he said. “I have every goodwill, but we’ll have to see what the leg says,” he said.
In an interview with Reuters last month, Francis repeated his oft-stated position that he might one day resign if failing health made it impossible for him to run the Church — something that was almost unthinkable before Benedict XVI resigned in 2013.
Asked when he thought that might happen, he said: “We don’t know. God will say”.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
