Pope Leo XIV’s health should not be taken “for granted”, a British senior Vatican official instructed the BBC.
Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s overseas minister since 2014, said the information of the Pope’s sick health was “a bit of a game changer”, including “it’s going to make things a bit different”.
The Pope was identified with lung adenocarcinoma following surgical procedure to take away a decrease lobe of his proper lung.
Speaking on Tuesday after the Pope’s operation was announced, but before his cancer diagnosis, Archbishop Gallagher said: “I think we were maybe taking him a little bit for granted.”
The 71-year-old had surgical procedure at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on Tuesday afternoon, which the Vatican said had been “successful” and proceeded without problems.
Speaking to Radio 4’s the Sunday Programme, due to air this weekend, the Archbishop said: “It’s in some ways I think going to be a bit of a game changer after having the latter years of Pope Francis when he was in the wheelchair.
“And Pope Leo comes along and he’s sporty and he seems to be in glorious health, and now we’re instructed that he’s not in glorious health and issues have got to be sorted out.”
Asked how it will make things different going forward, the Archbishop said church figures might have assumed “that he was not fairly like the relaxation of us who are very conscious of our vulnerabilities and the ageing course of”.
He went on: “But heaps of us have been through comparable experiences at completely different occasions in our lives, and we’ve got through them, and so we hope it’s going to be the same case with Pope Leo.
“I am concerned. I think we’ve got to ask the question: how was it discovered? What happened?”
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