‘Pray for Me,’ Pope Leo XIV Requests Faithful; Doctors Says Pontiff’s Lung Recovering Well

As he underwent lung surgery on Tuesday, Oct. 13, Pope Leo XIV called on the Catholic faithful to pray for him in his message read during the conclusion of the meeting of bishops on the family that ended at the Vatican on Wednesday, Oct. 14.

The meeting marked the 10th anniversary of the late pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia or the “The Joy of Love,” addressing the pastoral care of families.

“Entrusting each of you to the protection of the Holy Family of Nazareth, I ask you please to pray for me, as I pray for you,” the pope said in his brief message.

“As you know, I have been unable to be among you during these days. I thank you warmly for your prayers and for the work you have done together. Your sharing of experiences and attentive listening are indeed a gift to the whole Church,” Leo noted.

On Thursday, Oct. 15, Vatican News reported that the pope’s postoperative recovery was “progressing normally”.

“Doctors say his chest X-ray in the morning shows ‘good recovery of the lung that underwent surgery,” according to Vatican News.

The pope’s doctors said he “carried out his daily activities independently,” adding that “his physiotherapy session included a full range of physical activities.”

The Holy See Press Office reported that the pope concelebrated Mass on Thursday morning in a room specially prepared for the purpose on the 10th floor of Gemelli Hospital, as he had done on Wednesday afternoon.

As he resumed his work, Pope Leo met on Thursday afternoon with the Substitute for General Affairs, Archbishop Paolo Rudelli, the Holy See Press Office reported.

Questions swirl about pope’s future and what he knew when praying at a French shrine famed for cures

VATICAN CITY (AP) – When Leo was elected after the pained finale of Francis’ pontificate, there was hope that a younger, healthier pope would be able to guide the Catholic Church for quite some time before age and ailments slowed him.

Leo’s lung cancer diagnosis announced Tuesday has thrown a question mark into that scenario and his pontificate. Already, Peru’s president is suggesting Leo’s upcoming Latin America trip may have to be changed. But the revelation has also raised questions about what Leo knew and when, given his poignant prayers in late September at a French shrine where Catholics believe miraculous cures have occurred.

Vatican watchers say the 71-year-old’s diagnosis could regardless have other unintended effects, not all of them negative. It could propel Leo to accelerate his own agenda, which to date has been slow and deliberate. It also could galvanize support for him, bolstering his efforts to unify the fractured Catholic Church.

And most significant for his own ministry, the diagnosis has placed Leo squarely among the “fragile” and “vulnerable” who have emerged as a central focus of his pontificate.

“There’s something really beautiful in that even the most powerful person in the church is broken,” said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, associate professor of theology at Fordham University. “He’s been so, so eloquent on how our fragility is also a source of our strength.”

The relatively young pope was chosen last year

Leo was 69 when he was elected in 2025, relatively young compared with his two immediate predecessors.

Francis was 76 when elected in 2013 and already had part of one lung removed as a young man. He battled respiratory and mobility problems throughout his pontificate and died in 2025 after a lengthy hospitalization for double pneumonia.

Pope Benedict XVI was 78 when elected in 2005 and retired after eight years because he simply couldn’t go on anymore.

Leo was elected in large part because he was seen as someone who would be around long enough to stabilize and unify the church after Francis’ turbulent pontificate, and get the Vatican’s finances, in particular, into order. He brought a youthful vigor to the papacy, bounding up the stairs of St. Peter’s Square and zipping off to the country each week to play tennis and swim.

“It’s a big question mark on the investment that many people have made on this pontificate: an emotional investment, a political investment, even a financial investment,” said Massimo Faggioli, a theologian at Leo’s alma mater, Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

He noted that Leo has emerged as a powerful counterweight to the Trump administration in preaching a message of peace as the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran. He has become a respected moral authority on the need for safeguards on artificial intelligence.

And yet “even the pope gets the ‘emperor of maladies’ – cancer,” he said.

But assuming Leo recovers fully – and oncologists say his type of lung cancer has the best prognosis – he could emerge even stronger as a global figure.

“The mystique of the survivor is very strong in our culture,” Faggioli said.

The pope’s brother, Louis Prevost, who has had multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, since 2017, said that he expected his baby brother to pull through. He spoke to Leo on Monday, Oct. 12, and received messages from his secretary after the surgery saying he was OK.

“We’re hoping for the best,” Prevost told Newsmax from Tampa, Florida, where he’s in a clinical trial for his cancer. “They caught it early enough, and he’ll be able to heal from the surgery and go on with his papal ministry.”

A recent visit to Lourdes is now seen in a different light

And even if the future is uncertain, Leo can draw from the recent past to help get through it.

During his Sept. 25 to 28 visit to France, Leo followed in the footsteps of millions of pilgrims who flock to the shrine in Lourdes each year to drink its spring water and pray for miraculous cures for all that ails them.

The Vatican hasn’t said when Leo learned that doctors suspected he had a cancerous nodule in his lung, saying only that the nodule was discovered during “routine” checks.

There are strong suggestions that Leo knew something even before leaving for France and that he scheduled the surgery for Tuesday — typically his day off — “because he wanted to keep as much as possible the commitments he made,” said Giovanni Maria Vian, the former editor of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.

All of which would make Leo’s visit to Lourdes all the more poignant.

Leo arrived on the evening of Sept. 26 and immediately went to the Grotto of the Apparitions where alleged visions of the Virgin Mary were reported more than a century ago. He performed the “three gestures” of the Lourdes pilgrim seeking a cure: He drank from its springs, lit a candle and touched the rock.

The next day, he celebrated Mass before 150,000 people, many of them sick, and denounced laws allowing assisted dying. He plunged into a crowd of people in wheelchairs and allowed them to embrace him. After an exhausting day and seemingly struggling himself, Leo walked among the sick carrying a torch in an emotional torchlit procession, another key element of the Lourdes pilgrimage.

Leo told reporters en route home that he witnessed “almost miracles” in Lourdes “walking with, accompanying so many people who are sick and suffering and seeing how the grace of God’s presence manifested in many different ways, touches people’s hearts, transforms their lives.”

He didn’t include himself in their ranks. But he seems to have taken away the lesson of Lourdes.

“Being in a place, especially like Lourdes where people are searching for something much deeper and understanding that their lives, even in the midst of sickness or disability or pain of different kinds — their life has meaning,” he said.