Several days ago, the Vatican announced that he was having a lung nodule biopsied, and it looks like they did this and then went ahead with the removal of that lobe of his lung when it turned up positive.
My dad had this done in early 2023, 8 months before he died from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 90. Dad was a city firefighter for 36 years and raised by smokers, although AFAIK he never smoked. He declined further treatment, because the surgery appeared to get it all, and his doctors agreed.
I’m not Catholic, but I hope he makes a full recovery and lives out a very long and faithful life.
Not Catholic, or religious in any manner, but am a cancer survivor. Cancer sucks. I hope his treatment is successful and he has more years ahead of him.
Being a surgeon is a high-stress gig as it is. When your patient is the head of the Catholic Church? That has to just kick it up a notch. On the other hand, it does present a dynamite opportunity to score some brownie points with God. I like to imagine the surgeon will bring up the whole “I fixed the pope” thing in their prayers from here on out.
There were several back in the 1600’s and before who did not. Some even retired, elected a replacement, and moved to a monastery, only to later be called back to serve again as Pope.
From what I heard, there was a diagnosis of adenocarcinoma on intraoperative evaluation (probably frozen section). If tumor is limited to the small nodule, there aren’t any worrisome histologic features and no lymph node spread is detected, no further treatment may be indicated.
They’ll probably do molecular testing on tumor tissue in case targeted drug therapy is indicated now or in the future.