Pope Leo has lung cancer

The Vatican announced late on Tuesday that Pope Leo has lung cancer. Surgeons at Rome's Gemelli hospital removed the lower lobe of his right lung in an operation the Vatican said concluded "successfully, on schedule and as planned"; a medical bulletin confirmed lung adenocarcinoma, suspected in preoperative tests and verified during the roughly 90-minute procedure. Leo, who is 71 and became the first US-born leader of the Roman Catholic church last year, had told crowds in St Peter's Square on Sunday that doctors had found a small, "well-contained" nodule during a checkup and that he would follow their advice in having it removed.

All papal appointments are cancelled until 20 October, and the weekly Wednesday audience passes to Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, elected dean of the college of cardinals only last week. The college of cardinals is the authority that presides over a conclave. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, saw Leo on Monday night and said the two had spoken "with great serenity," adding that the announcement came "like a bolt out of the blue" but that such things, caught in time, "can be resolved."

Leo is recovering on the tenth floor of the Gemelli, a hospital in north-west Rome renowned for treating reigning popes — though not in the papal suite, which is being renovated. That suite exists because John Paul II stayed at the Gemelli so often that the Vatican built high-security quarters there. Leo's predecessor Francis spent more than five weeks at the same hospital being treated for bronchitis that developed into bilateral pneumonia. A large crowd greeted Leo's arrival on Tuesday.

The pope, born in Chicago and generally believed to be in good health, kept a full schedule until now: a papal visit to France in September, and a 12-day trip across ten South American cities still planned for November.

Francis died at home in Vatican City on 21 April 2025, just under a month after being discharged from the Gemelli.