Pope Francis’s ninth night in hospital was peaceful, the Vatican said Sunday, the day after revealing the 88-year-old was in a “critical” condition.
The pope had on Saturday suffered a prolonged respiratory attack and required blood transfusions, the Vatican said that evening, while adding that he was alert and sitting in a chair.
“At the moment the prognosis is reserved,” the Saturday statement had concluded, sparking widespread alarm about the leader of the world’s almost 1.4 billion Catholics.
Sunday morning’s update from the Vatican was brief: “The night passed peacefully, the pope rested.”
A Vatican source later said that, unlike earlier in the week, the Argentine pontiff had not eaten breakfast and had not read the newspapers.
Francis, head of the Catholic Church since 2013, was initially admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on February 14 with bronchitis, but it developed into double pneumonia.
Doctors had on Friday confirmed he was “not out of danger” but said he was slightly improved — building hopes for a recovery that was swiftly dashed.
Suffering more
“The Holy Father’s condition continues to be critical, therefore, as explained (Friday), the pope is not out of danger,” the Vatican said on Saturday evening.
It said Francis continued to be alert and “spent the day in an armchair even if he was suffering more than” the day before.
It said he had on Saturday morning suffered a “prolonged asthmatic respiratory crisis, which also required the application of high-flow oxygen”.
Daily blood tests also “showed thrombocytopenia, associated with anemia, which required the administration of blood transfusions”, it added.
Thrombocytopenia is a condition that occurs when the platelet count in someone’s blood is too low, which can cause trouble stopping bleeding — and can be life-threatening.
Blood or platelet transfusions, delivered via an intravenous (IV) line into a blood vessel, are given to people who are either bleeding heavily or at very high risk of bleeding, according to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
