Since she was taken to the hospital with severe pneumonia for two weeks, Pope Francis signed the appointment of 20 bishops, agreed to resign at least four and agreed to transfer five people along the way to holiness, according to The Daily Bulletin on the Vatican website.
Some of the events that I noticed were more artistic, such as his appointment of Cardinal to represent him in April in the celebration of the first anniversary of the crowning of the brave first Polslo, the first king of Poland.
In general, he changed the general period of the chair in the absence of its public face – it lacks the weekly manifestations of the Pope and his statements on important global issues, such as reprimanding the Trump administration on migrant deportations. However, the Vatican state mechanism gives up even while the 88 -year -old ink is located in the hospital without emptying the calendar.
In response to a question about the work of the Pope, Matteo Brunei, Matteo Brunei, said. “What he lacks is contact with believers, public masses, pastoral activity.”
In a statement on Thursday evening, the Vatican said that the clinical condition of the Pope continued to improve. He said he was alternating between using a large flow of oxygen and ventilation mask, and the morning spent conducting respiratory physical therapy and rest, before the afternoon round of physical therapy.
“In light of the complexity of the clinical image, other days of clinical stability are needed to determine the diagnosis,” the Vatican statement said. The Press Office in the Vatican added that the Pope is no longer considered critical, but it is still not supernatural.
However, the entire ordeal of his extended residence in Jimili Hospital, and his longest heroes, with no public appearance, may awaken old concerns between church experts and observers about who governs the church if this or any Pope falls into a coma or a inability to do so.
To some extent, the Apostolic Chair works very similar to a political system with the president and prime minister. The Pope, in this scenario, deals with the main statements and dates of policies, while the Foreign Minister, Cardinal Petro Baroline, supervises the daily issues participating in the Vatican administration himself and the International Church.
The limited forces on the Pope alone include the appointment of bishops, acceptance of retirement and the issuance of new decrees to change the Vatican Law. In addition, the bureaucracy is unlikely to make statements of policies on global import issues, such as the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza, without having its focus.
Inevitably, Francis disease postpones some decisions, in which the critics of his agenda do not mind. Before developing the disease, for example, a black -life Francis, a controversial Catholic Organization, was established in Peru. Some supporters of the group were hoping to slow down his illness in implementing the decision. But Vatican officials and experts alike said that there was no special slowdown during this hospital because the Pope, while the patient raises, remains in a state of alert and able to deal with those around him.
Reverend Thomas J. Reese, the Vatican analyst for a long time and the author of “Inside the Vatican: Politics and the Organization of the Catholic Church” as long as the Pope can understand what people say to him and can sign his name. “
But there are no fixed legal guidelines for what to do when this is not the case, especially if any deficit for several months instead of weeks. In the event of a summary entry in the hospital, many of these procedures already in the pipeline can continue without any obstacles.
But the main decisions, such as those appointed as bishops in a high -level city, will be a problem. Experts said it would be very difficult to remove the wrong cardinal or any other prominent personality.
Pope Francis, like Paul VI in the 1960s, announced that shortly after her papal assumption in 2013, a resignation letter occurred if he was unable. But its contents have been secret, and experts refer to a number of mysterious issues legally.
First, who will decide that the Pope is helpless? Second, the Church Law states that in order for any valid resignation, the Pope must have chosen freely to make the decision. Some legal experts ask whether a letter has been written for more than a decade that will pass with a crowd as a decision “chosen freely”.
In modern history, the question was more severe during the long decline in Pope John Paul II, who began to suffer from Parkinson’s disease years before his death in 2005. Although he could still answer “yes” or “no”, Father Reese said “no”.
The most amazing result was that some defenders of John Paul attributed to his slow facilities is the lack of a response from the church to widespread accusations of sexual assault on children by Catholic clerics.
“The Church has paid a great price for that in twenty years since then,” said Dr. Miles Pattinden, a history professor and author of “Cambridge History for Babylonia”.
The full pop problem is not exactly a new problem, but it is more complicated in the age of social media, immediate and longevity. Father Reese said: “In the bad old days, the doctors were killing him quickly through bleeding and terrible medicine,” or “just closing it in a back room and they turned the church.”
Before the year 1700, there was a firm precedent from “my nephew Cardinal”, which is close to the sick Pope, running in the name of his name. “The old or elderly Pope who was suffering from his impotence would remain in bed and his nephew would manage the government.”
Mr. Allen said that the church leaders have long been reluctant to address the issue of determining when the Pope could be considered helpless because it impedes the theory that the Pope must have complete freedom to act. “No one can tell the Pope when it ends,” he said. “It is not customary to navigate how you reach the end of the papacy without the quick will of the Pope.”
Obstacles are evident in specific rulings such as Canon 335 of the Vatican Law, which states that if the Apostolic Chair is “completely vacant or impeded”, nothing can be changed in the governance of the Church. But “completely hindered” was not defined.
Francis’s predecessor, Pordek 16, resigned at the age of eighty, citing age and impotence, but he was very strange – no door stepped in nearly 600 years.
Looking at the jumps in modern medicine to prolong life, an international group of Catholic legal experts proposed rules to present what constitutes “completely hindering”, and called for the transfer of the ruling authority to the entire Cardinate College or the Committee, depending on the period spent by the Pope. If a committee of experts consider that the Pope is irreversible, the Cardinate in Korea will have to announce his ruling days and contact a group of the Pope to name a new door.
But those were just proposals and so far no law has witnessed the light of daylight.
As the Pope’s condition improved slowly, there appears to be less urgent, but depending on the time it takes in the hospital, it can still have an effect.
The streets of the Vatican city and Rome churches are full of pilgrims here for the year of the jubilee in the church, but their hopes for seeing Pope Francis decreased while he was in the hospital.
“The great reason that most people will come to Rome during the jubilee year is to see the Pope,” said Mr. Allen. “If you cannot see the Pope, this puts a disinfectant on things.”
