Pope Leo XIV to have lung nodule surgery at Rome hospital

Pope Leo XIV will be admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Tuesday, Oct. 13, for surgery to remove a small lung nodule, the Holy See Press Office said, and all of his audiences are cancelled through Oct. 20.

The 71-year-old pope told the crowd at his Sunday Angelus prayer on Oct. 11 that doctors found the nodule during recent checkups. Press office director Matteo Bruni said the nodule was discovered in routine tests, America magazine reported, not because of symptoms such as inflammation or infection.

“It was detected at a very early stage and is well localised,” the pope said, according to Euronews. “I have decided to undergo surgery to have it removed,” he said. He described the procedure as already scheduled for the coming days.

Neither report says whether the nodule is cancerous, and the Vatican has not published a diagnosis. Canada News Media has not seen a medical statement beyond the press office briefings.

Bruni said the pope is expected to stay in hospital for about a week after the operation, Vatican News reported. It said he is due to enter the hospital late in the morning on Tuesday. America reported he will stay on the 10th floor, in the suite used by Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II, and that Vatican sources said the operation could happen the same day. The Vatican has not given a surgery time or named a surgeon.

The Prefecture of the Papal Household cancelled all papal audiences through Oct. 20, Vatican News reported. The pope held his scheduled private audiences on Monday, Oct. 12, but skipped the afternoon session of a meeting marking the anniversary of Amoris Laetitia, the 2016 papal document on family life. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the new dean of the College of Cardinals, will preside at the concluding Mass on Wednesday, Oct. 14, in his place.

The Rev. Giacomo Costa, a Jesuit priest, said the pope asked that its synthesis report not be published as planned so he can hear its contents first and review it after leaving hospital. “I think this desire of his to listen is beautiful,” Costa said.

Archbishop Jorge Eduardo Lozano of San Juan, Argentina, who met the pope on Monday, said Leo seemed “very well, in very good spirits,” America reported. Leo has had one known hospital stay before: typhoid fever in Peru in 1985, according to America. Heads of state including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, Italy’s Sergio Mattarella and Giorgia Meloni sent good wishes, the magazine said.

The surgery was scheduled quickly in part because of the pope’s travel plans, America reported. Leo is due to visit Uruguay from Nov. 6 to 8, Argentina from Nov. 8 to 11 and Peru from Nov. 11 to 16, and a Vatican source told the magazine the trip is expected to go ahead. Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J., noted that some stops are at high altitude, saying “you need to be careful if you have issues with your lungs.” The magazine’s account does not say whether doctors have cleared him for altitude.

For Canada, the news touches the country’s largest religious community. About 10.9 million people, or 29.9 per cent of the population, identified as Catholic in the 2021 census, according to the National Catholic Register’s reporting of Statistics Canada data. That was almost two million fewer than in 2011. Prime Minister Mark Carney, a practising Catholic, travelled to Rome for Leo’s inaugural Mass in May 2025, CBC reported. Canada News Media did not find a statement from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops or the federal government on the surgery as of Oct. 13.

Leo, born in Chicago, became pope in 2025 after the death of Francis. The Vatican is expected to update the public after the operation, and his audiences are due to resume after Oct. 20 if his recovery goes as planned. This story is developing and will be updated.

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