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Pope Leo XIV told the faithful in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday that doctors had found a nodule on his lung, and that he will have surgery to remove it in the coming days.
He delivered the news himself, in Italian, from the window of the Apostolic Palace, moments after his reflection on the parable of the wedding banquet. A murmur of surprise moved through the crowd as he spoke.
“Recently, during some medical checks, the doctors found a circumscribed nodule on my lung,” Leo said. “It was detected at a very early stage and is well localized.”
His doctors judged it wise to operate, he explained, and he had decided to follow their advice. Then he thanked the crowd for its spiritual closeness and entrusted himself to its prayers.
The Vatican later said Leo would undergo surgery in the first days of the week, with an expected recovery time of a week. Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, told reporters the operation will take place at Rome’s Gemelli hospital.
What we know about the nodule
The Vatican has not said whether the nodule is malignant, and any honest account has to begin there. A lung nodule is a small, rounded spot in lung tissue, usually caught on a CT scan or an X-ray; some are benign, and some are not.
When a nodule is small, sharply defined, and found early, surgeons generally take it out. Removal treats the problem and gives pathologists the tissue they need, since a lab examination is the only way to know what the nodule is.
Most of these operations are now minimally invasive, done through small incisions with a camera or a surgical robot. Surgeons remove either the section of lung holding the nodule or, when necessary, an entire lobe.
Leo, who turned 71 last month, had no previously known health problems. He plays tennis weekly and swims at Castel Gandolfo, according to the Associated Press. His Nov. 6–17 trip to Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru remains on the calendar for now, though the Vatican has not said whether recovery will change it.
How the Vatican learned to talk about a pope’s body
For most of the modern papacy, a pope’s health was handled like a state secret. When John Paul I died in September 1978, 33 days into his pontificate, the Vatican said his secretary had found the body.
The Vatican later conceded that the nuns who brought his morning coffee had found him. No autopsy was ever performed, and the discrepancy fed decades of murder theories.
John Paul II declined in full view of the world while the institution around him said as little as it could. He did tell pilgrims at the Angelus in July 1992 that he was going to Gemelli for tests, and three days later surgeons removed a benign colon tumor along with his gallbladder.
His tremor, though, was plain to anyone watching for years, and Vatican officials rarely spoke of Parkinson’s disease by name. When Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re mentioned it to Corriere della Sera in May 2003, the remark was reported as a slip.
Benedict XVI resigned on Feb. 11, 2013, telling the cardinals that the ministry requires “strength of mind and body” and that his own had deteriorated. Only after that announcement did the Vatican acknowledge that he had quietly had his pacemaker battery replaced months earlier, and that he had hit his head on a sink during his 2012 trip to Mexico.
Francis broke the pattern. He lost part of his right lung to an infection at 21, in 1957, and he talked about it. His July 2021 colon surgery was announced by the press office hours after an Angelus at which he had said nothing about it; in the years that followed, though, he spoke openly about his ailments and greeted crowds from a wheelchair rather than hiding it.
When pneumonia in both lungs put him in Gemelli for 38 days in 2025, the press office released near-daily medical bulletins. He died on April 21, less than a month after going home.
A shepherd who stands before his flock as a patient
On Sunday, Leo told the Church what his doctors had found before a surgeon ever touched him. He asked for prayer, and he left the speculation with nothing to feed on.
The choice matters well beyond Vatican communications. Catholic teaching holds that illness never strips a person of dignity, and John Paul II wrote in Salvifici Doloris that suffering, joined to Christ’s, takes part in the work of redemption. A pope who names his own diagnosis at the window lives that teaching out loud.
Americans have been trained to expect something else from the powerful. The White House disclosed President Trump’s chronic venous insufficiency in July 2025 only after photographs of his swollen ankles drew public questions.
Leo chose the window over the communiqué. On a Sunday when the Gospel told of a king who sent his servants into the streets to fill his wedding hall, the pope invited the whole Church to keep watch with him through a week in the hospital. Pray for him by name this week. The surgical team at Gemelli could use our prayers as well.
At Letters from Leo, we stand with Pope Leo XIV as he goes into lung surgery at Gemelli this week, and with every patient who waits on a scan or a biopsy without a press office to speak for them. The Church he leads teaches that a sick body never loses its dignity, and on Sunday he lived that teaching in front of the world.
In an age when the powerful treat weakness as something to hide, we are building a community that tells the truth about power and about frailty alike. People are hungry for that kind of honesty, and this week, as Leo heads into the operating room, they are hungry to pray for him.
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Prayers for a successful surgery and full recovery for Pope Leo ~ the world needs his leadership now more than ever
I offer my prayers for Pope Leo to have a successful surgery.