VATICAN CITY (RNS) — In October of 1996, Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro Valls admitted to reporters concerned about the health of Pope John Paul II that the 80-year-old pontiff suffered from “extrapyramidal syndrome,” a medical umbrella term that takes in several neurological diseases, including Parkinson’s. According to Philip Pullella, the veteran Vatican correspondent for Reuters, Navarro Valls’ higher ups were not happy that he had shared even this oblique news of the pope’s condition with the press.
It was only four years later, long after John Paul had developed trouble walking, that his doctors confirmed he had the disease. By February of 2005, Navarro Valls seemed to have learned his lesson: The morning after John Paul had undergone a tracheotomy after struggling to breathe, the spokesperson assured a room full of journalists that the operation was “not an emergency procedure” and related that the pope had enjoyed a breakfast that included 10 biscotti, a meal that independent doctors consulted by the Los Angeles Times called, under the circumstances, “possible, but not advisable.”
Many Vatican watchers have noted the contrast with the hospitalization of the current pope to treat bilateral pneumonia. Two weeks after he was admitted, on Feb. 28, a Vatican bulletin reported that the 88-year-old Pope Francis had “an isolated crisis of bronchial spasm” that resulted in his inhaling vomit, which had to be aspirated from his lungs. Later bulletins reported acute respiratory insufficiencies and initial indications of kidney failure.
“When they spoke about papal vomit,” said Pullella, “that was very, very specific — so specific that it wasn’t really necessary. They obviously wanted to show that, ‘Look, we’ve got nothing to hide.’”
The extraordinary amount of information regarding Francis’ hospitalization and treatment, reportedly at the pontiff’s own order, is a sign of increasing transparency from recent pontificates about the pope’s health, which in the past was a taboo subject. In Francis’ case, daily medical bulletins offer detailed updates on his health, from his physical therapy to the mechanical ventilation he has every night.
“These bulletins have established a kind of pattern of credibility and honesty so that when they come out, people take them seriously,” said John Allen, editor and founder of Crux with decades of experience covering the Vatican, speaking to RNS. He described this transparency as “entirely new” and “quite healthy.”
Surgeon Sergio Alfieri speaks to journalists, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025, in the entrance hall of Rome’s Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic, where Pope Francis is being treated for pneumonia. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
There have been limits: No picture of the pope being treated at the hospital has been made public, and Francis was not seen, as in past hospital visits, looking out his window to greet the crowds at the hospital for the Angelus prayer. “Do we really need a photo of the pope in pajamas on the newspapers? Let’s respect his intimacy,” said the pope’s surgeon, Sergio Alfieri, in a press conference Feb. 21.
On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine a moment more intimate than a March 6 audio recording in which Francis thanked those who prayed for his recovery, making no effort to hide his shortness of breath and the hiss of his oxygen supply.
“I think we are on a transparency arc when it comes to the pope’s health,” explained Allen. “In the old days, the model was that you got no information about the pope’s health whatsoever, and it was considered borderline heretical even to ask.”
For much of the church’s history, the pope’s body was closely associated with the sanctity of his office, as the papal historian Agostino Paravicini Bagliani described in detail in his 1994 book “The Pope’s Body.” Sanctity is often bound up with mystery, and so the head of the church’s health was shrouded in secrecy until the past century.
In an editorial published on Aug. 19, 1914, the Vatican newspaper l’Osservatore Romano condemned reports circulating in Rome that Pope Pius X was suffering from a cold. The pope died a day later. Adding to the veil of mystery, popes who fell ill were treated within the Vatican walls by a team of doctors who were sworn to secrecy. Despite Navarro Valls’ misadventures, it was with John Paul, the first pope to be treated at a hospital, that information about the pope’s health became publicly shared, not because of the threat of illness but an attempt on his life.
People leave notes and offer prayers for Pope Francis under a statue of St. John Paul II, center, outside Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, Monday, Feb. 24, 2025. (RNS photo/Claire Giangravé)
On May 13, 1981, John Paul was rushed to Rome’s Gemelli hospital after a previously convicted assassin, a Turk named Mehmet Ali Ağca, shot the pontiff during his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square. The pope underwent a lengthy surgery, with the Vatican offering updates on his recovery. “Even that night, they started having medical bulletins,” Pullella recalled.
As he aged and his health declined, John Paul visited Gemelli so often that he referred to the hospital as “Vatican III,” after the Vatican and the pope’s summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. He was treated for infections, a broken femur, and underwent other routine procedures. But the Vatican was less willing to address his long-term illness, which began to be noticeable in the 1990s in a light tremor in his hands.
“Clearly John Paul had something, because he was shaking, and you could see it, and it was getting worse in the course of a few years. But nobody wanted to say what he had, although it was clear to non-experts and experts alike that he had Parkinson’s,” Pullella said.
But at the time, the increasing frankness about the pope’s health was shocking. “There was quite a bit of criticism for the amount of information and how public it actually became, and quite a few people were sort of upset,” Pullella said, recalling a 30-minute live recording of John Paul II leaving the hospital with his tracheotomy incision visible on his neck, which caused an uproar from those who thought it was undignified.
In the last years of his life, John Paul continued to appear in public, putting his increasing ill health on display, a trend that Francis seems determined to continue. More private about his personal health early in his pontificate — at one time the Vatican would only notify journalists of Francis’ hospitalizations after they occurred — he seems to have gone far in the other direction as his crises have become more grave.
“You have to give the pope credit for that,” Allen said. “Francis is savvy enough to realize that the news cycle, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and in a news vacuum, speculation proliferates,” he added.
“If you take the internet as your guide, he’s been dead and buried and then resurrected multiple times already,” he continued, “so I think part of this transparency is also tactical.” In an age when the resignation of a pope is no longer a remote possibility, even as it came up in John Paul’s later days, Allen speculated that the pope’s push toward transparency may serve as a reminder “that he’s still in charge.”
The daily medical bulletins never fail to mention that the pope remains alert and vigilant and that he even continues his work when he can. “And I think that that projects the message that the pope is not out of it, that the pope is still making decisions. The pope is still pulling strings,” Allen said.