Pope Leo Resumes Some Duties as the Vatican Runs Without Him

Pope Leo XIV has resumed some papal duties, the Vatican said on Thursday, three days after surgeons in Rome removed the lower lobe of his right lung and tests confirmed lung cancer. CBS News reported that the 71-year-old pontiff is recovering "as expected" and has begun respiratory physiotherapy.

The disclosure followed a sequence of Vatican briefings that began on Monday, when the Holy See announced a nodular lesion had been found in the pope's lung. The operation on Tuesday was described by the Vatican as "successful, on schedule and as planned", according to the Guardian. France 24 reported that Leo had said the nodule was detected at a very early stage, and that further testing would follow.

Leo, an American, had no previously known health problems and was described by CBS News as physically active before the lesion was identified. The diagnosis has placed the machinery of the Holy See under unusual scrutiny from foreign correspondents in Rome, who have covered the Vatican's long practice of functioning when a pope cannot.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that the Vatican bureaucracy has been fine-tuned over hundreds of years to run smoothly even when the pope is incapacitated. That institutional design is now being tested in real time, as the pope recovers in a Rome hospital rather than at the Vatican, and as the question of what he can and cannot sign, appoint or approve is answered piece by piece by the Holy See's press office.

Doctors quoted by CBS News said the pope's prognosis may depend on several factors, including the pathology of the removed tissue and his underlying health. The Vatican has not published a staging of the disease, and the wire accounts do not say whether further treatment such as chemotherapy has been scheduled. France 24 noted only that additional testing would follow the operation.

For Rome, the practical effects are already visible. The city is the seat of both the Italian state and the Holy See, and the pope's hospitalisation draws the world's Vatican press corps to the capital at a moment when the Italian government's own agenda — including the prime minister's public criticism of a US deal to buy Russian diesel, reported by The Local Italy — is competing for the same foreign attention.

The wire also carried lighter items from the city in the same week: The Local Italy reported that police had identified the attackers behind a minicar incident in Rome, and that a Qantas Dreamliner was grounded at Fiumicino airport after passengers were bitten by bedbugs on a flight from Australia. Neither is connected to the pope's condition, but both reflect how foreign outlets assemble their Rome coverage — a papal bulletin, a public-safety item and an airport mishap, filed to the same desk.

What the Vatican has not done is name a timeline. CBS News reported the pope had resumed some work, but the Holy See has not said when he will leave the hospital or whether he will preside over any scheduled events. Until it does, the Curia continues to operate on the terms the New York Times described: an institution built to keep moving when its head cannot.