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Pope Leo XIV is recovering at Gemelli Hospital after surgery for lung cancer, and more than 2,000 of you have now written to him. If you haven’t yet, please sign the letter tonight. Letters from Leo will deliver every one to the Vatican on behalf of our community.
Pope Leo XIV has lung cancer.
The Vatican confirmed the diagnosis on Tuesday, after surgeons at Rome’s Gemelli hospital removed the lower lobe of the Holy Father’s right lung. Tests found a lung adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer in the United States. The operation, the Vatican said, was successful and caused no complications.
This news breaks my heart. Thank God the surgery went well. I’ve always been honest with you, though, and I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t nervous.
Leo told the world about the nodule from the window of the Apostolic Palace during Sunday’s Angelus, as I reported this week. Doctors found it “at a very early stage,” he said, and he chose to follow their advice and have it removed. Then he asked us for something. “I thank you for your spiritual closeness and entrust myself to your prayers,” he told the crowd in St. Peter’s Square.
On Tuesday, Leo walked into Gemelli through the main entrance and waved to the well-wishers gathered outside. A team led by Dr. Stefano Margaritora, the hospital’s chief thoracic surgeon, operated on him. He spent about three hours in the operating room (the surgery itself took roughly 90 minutes), and as it got underway, hospital staff gathered in the chapel to pray the Rosary.
Cardinal Baldassare Reina, the vicar of Rome, opened that prayer by asking the Lord to “sustain our bishop, Pope Leo.”
Gemelli keeps a papal suite with a private chapel on its 10th floor, but it is under renovation, so Leo is recovering in a room nearby. It is one more sign of how quickly all of this came together.
We still don’t know much. The Vatican hasn’t said what stage the cancer is in or whether it has spread. Its statement said nothing about future treatment, though the Vatican noted that doctors aren’t currently discussing chemotherapy or other therapies.
The early signs offer hope.
Before the operation, oncologists told the Associated Press that Leo’s prognosis would be excellent even if the nodule proved cancerous, because doctors caught it early.
Dr. Lorenzo Spaggiari, who runs thoracic surgery at Milan’s European Institute of Oncology and has no role in the pope’s care, explained that surgeons also remove the lymph nodes draining the affected lobe. If those come back clean, he said, “the outlook is very good.”
The nodule turned up during routine checks, before it caused Leo a single symptom. Spaggiari called that luck, and he guessed the pope might call it something else.
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, walked through the diagnosis on CNN’s The Arena on Tuesday.
He explained that Leo underwent a video-assisted lobectomy, a minimally invasive way of removing part of a lung, and noted that adenocarcinoma strikes smokers and nonsmokers alike.
If the cancer was caught as early as Leo said it was, Reiner told the network, “the pope may very well be cured by this.”
Reiner added that Leo’s age and fitness should help him recover quickly, though he expects it will take a few weeks before the pope feels like himself again.
The Vatican expects Leo to remain at Gemelli for about a week, and it has canceled his audiences through Oct. 20. His longest trip as pope, to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, is scheduled for Nov. 6 to 17.
Leo’s moves over the past week make more sense now.
On Oct. 9, four days before he entered Gemelli, he approved Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle’s election as dean of the College of Cardinals, the first Asian to hold the post. The dean presides over a conclave whenever the papacy falls vacant.
As I reported on Monday, Leo also asked Tagle to celebrate tomorrow’s Mass marking the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia, which closes a Vatican meeting of the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences. Expect the Filipino cardinal’s role to grow in the days ahead, starting with that Mass.
None of this softens the shock. Leo is 71, and by every outward measure he is in excellent shape. He plays tennis every week and swims, and as far as anyone knows he has never smoked. Before Sunday, the only hospital stay anyone knew about came in 1985, when he caught typhoid fever as a young missionary in Chulucanas, Peru.
He later told his biographer, Elise Ann Allen, that he complained to God from that hospital bed about his sense of humor, and that the ordeal settled his decision to stay in Peru.
The knot in my stomach tonight feels a lot like the one I woke up with on Easter Monday 2025, when the news came that Pope Francis had died. Francis had spent five weeks at this same hospital that winter, fighting double pneumonia. He went home, and for a while he seemed to be getting better. In our hearts, most of us still knew how his story would end.
Tonight is different, because nobody knows how this story ends. The doctors are hopeful. As Christians, we are bound to hope. That has never required us to pretend we aren’t afraid.
I keep returning to the last scene in the Gospel of Matthew. The eleven disciples climb a mountain in Galilee, and the risen Jesus appears to them there. Matthew records their reaction without any polish: “When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.”
Jesus doesn’t scold them or send the doubters home. He comes closer and entrusts every one of them with the Great Commission, promising to stay with them always, until the end of the age. Faith and fear lived in those men at the same time, and the Church was built on them anyway.
Leo has built his papacy on those Easter encounters. “Peace be with you all” were the first words he spoke from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on the night of his election, and he told the crowd they were the first words of the risen Christ. He greeted us that night with tears in his eyes.
I am afraid tonight, and I suspect many of you are too.
I also believe this with my whole heart: the United States and the world desperately need Leo XIV.
In 17 months, he has become a clear voice for peace and for the dignity of migrants and the poor, and last month some 800,000 people filled central Paris for his open-air Mass.
Losing him would be a catastrophe, and I don’t say that lightly. The last thing this Church needs is to be pulled into chaos.
We want his steady hand on the wheel for many years to come, which means we need him to live.
That is why Washington's silence is so hard to understand.
As I reported on Monday, heads of state from Rome to Buenos Aires sent Leo their prayers while President Trump and Vice President Vance said nothing.
By Tuesday evening, I still found no public word from either man or the White House about the pope’s diagnosis.
Vance, a Catholic convert, met Leo at the Vatican 11 days after his election. The first American pope has cancer, and his home country’s leaders haven’t offered him a sentence of prayer or encouragement. At this point, their silence is shameful.
So if you’re a person who prays, pray for Pope Leo XIV tonight. Pray for his healing and for the doctors and nurses at Gemelli who are caring for him. If I could, I would give Leo XIV my own lung. That isn’t possible, so we give him our hearts instead.
Earlier today I posted a short video of the choir in the Sistine Chapel singing the Oremus pro Pontifice over Leo after his first Mass as pope, on May 9, 2025. In my weird little corner of the internet, it has gone viral.
The chant is ancient, drawn from Psalm 41, and its Latin is beautiful and plain: Dominus conservet eum, et vivificet eum. May the Lord preserve him and give him life.
On the night he was elected, Leo reminded the world that all of us rest in God’s hands. Tonight he does too.
The opening line of that old chant has become this community’s motto: Let us pray for Leo, our pope.
At Letters from Leo, we stand with Pope Leo XIV tonight. We are praying for his full recovery, and for every Catholic and person of goodwill who spent this evening on their knees for a shepherd they have come to love.
Sickness reminds us that a pope is a man, with a body as fragile as ours. It also reminds us what a community is for. When one member suffers, St. Paul told the Corinthians, all the members suffer with it.
This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for a faith that tells the truth, including the truth that we’re afraid, and still chooses hope.
If you do one thing tonight, sign our get well letter to Pope Leo XIV. More than 2,000 of you have already written to him, and Letters from Leo will deliver every letter to the Vatican on behalf of this community. Add a prayer or simply sign your name.
If you believe this movement matters, with Catholics and people of goodwill keeping vigil for the Holy Father in a frightened world, I am asking you to join us.
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Praying for Pope Leo! I'm a semi-agnostic, mildly observant non-Christian who still believes in the existence of a divine power. Pope Leo is a sorely needed gift to this world at this time - may he come out of this stronger than ever!
Beautifully written and reflective of my thoughts. Our president and vice president lack even basic compassion. To be honest I’d rather have their silence than what I imagine they might say. Pope Leo has the prayer and thoughts of millions. As I pray everyday, where there is worry, trust in You.