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Since we opened our get-well card on Sunday, more than 1,500 of you have written to Pope Leo XIV. If you haven’t yet, please sign the letter before he enters the hospital on Tuesday. Letters from Leo will deliver every one to the Vatican on behalf of our community.
Prayers for Pope Leo XIV poured into Rome on Sunday and Monday from heads of state and church leaders around the world, after the 71-year-old pope told St. Peter’s Square that doctors had found a small nodule in his lung and that he would have it removed.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella wrote the pope a letter promising him the “caring thoughts” of believers and non-believers alike. Giorgia Meloni found the calm with which Leo delivered the news reassuring, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Isaac Herzog and Javier Milei sent well wishes of their own. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, is holding him in her prayers.
Two names are missing from that list. As of Monday morning, neither President Donald Trump nor Vice President JD Vance had said a public word about the pope’s surgery.
The silence is surprising. Leo is the first pope from the United States, and Vance is Catholic. Both men criticized Leo this spring over his opposition to the Iran war, but a word of prayer for a sick man would have cost either of them nothing.
More important, Leo has the prayers of the American people. Worshippers at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral prayed for him at Sunday Mass. Archbishop Ronald Hicks of New York, finishing a week on the Camino de Santiago, asked Jesus, the Divine Physician, to guide the hands of the pope’s surgeons.
A week at Gemelli
Leo will be admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital late Tuesday morning, the Holy See Press Office announced Monday. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni expects the stay to last about a week. The Prefecture of the Papal Household has canceled all of the pope’s appointments through Oct. 20. The pope himself has said the nodule was “detected at a very early stage” and is well localized.
He kept his Monday morning audiences anyway, greeting the volunteers of the Circolo San Pietro in a strong, clear voice.
Wednesday was supposed to belong to him. Leo convened the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences in Rome this week for the 10th anniversary of Amoris laetitia, and he opened the summit by putting mercy at its center. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle will now celebrate the closing Mass in St. Peter’s Square in his place.
Leaving the house in order
Tagle’s role on Wednesday explains, to my mind, the timing of something we learned last week. On Friday, Leo approved Tagle’s election as dean of the College of Cardinals, making the Filipino cardinal the first Asian to hold the post. Tagle, 69, succeeds the 92-year-old Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. When the papacy falls vacant, the dean takes charge of the conclave.
The next day, Leo named Archbishop Vittorio Francesco Viola archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica. Viola, a Franciscan with a doctorate in liturgy, spent five years as secretary of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, the office that carried out Pope Francis’s restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass. Plenty of traditionalists wanted a champion of the old rite in that post, and the choice disappointed them. Unsurprisingly, Leo did not go in their direction.
Taken together, the appointments look like a pope leaving his house in order before an operation. Nothing in the public record suggests danger. Leo is 71, plays tennis and, by every public account, is in good health. A careful governor still plans for every outcome, though, and he filled two of the Vatican’s most visible posts before checking in.
Francis did something similar. On Feb. 6, 2025, eight days before he entered Gemelli with the bronchitis that turned into double pneumonia, he extended Re’s term as dean and promoted Cardinal Robert Prevost into the order of cardinal bishops. Three months later, the cardinals elected Prevost pope.
God willing, none of this preparation will matter, and the doctors will send Leo home within the week.
The Letter of James tells the sick to call for the elders of the Church, and it makes a promise to those who do: “The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up.” Leo asked us for that prayer on Sunday. If you are a person who prays, please pray for him this week. We hope he recovers quickly, because this community wants to see him back at that window over St. Peter’s Square.
Since Sunday, more than 1,500 of you have written Pope Leo a get-well letter. If you haven’t, please sign the letter today, and Letters from Leo will carry it to the Vatican with the rest.
At Letters from Leo, we stand with Pope Leo XIV and with the millions of Catholics and people of goodwill, in Rome and in his own country, who are praying for him this week.
The Gospel asks us to visit the sick, and on Sunday the pope asked the whole world for its prayers. Silence from Washington changes nothing about that duty, which belongs to each of us.
This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for a faith that shows up for the sick and the forgotten, even when the people in power look away.
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Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.
The silence from Vance and Trump isn’t surprising at all considering both of these disingenuous liars use religion as a prop to convey their twisted relationship with their “god”, and what he demands of us with regard to tolerance and empathy.
I’m glad they are staying silent, because I’m honestly afraid of what they would say.