Vatican denies Pope has tumor
Print Edition
The Vatican denied an Italian newspaper report yesterday that Pope Francis has a benign brain tumor, saying the 78-year-old pontiff was in good health and denouncing the article as utterly reprehensible.
In one of three increasingly tough denials issued as the story spread around the world, the Vatican called the report in Quotidiano Nazionale daily “a grave act of irresponsibility, absolutely inexcusable and unconscionable.”
Francis held his weekly general audience before tens of thousands of people in St Peter’s Square and afterward returned to a three-week gathering of Roman Catholic bishops, which he has been attending daily.
Quotidiano Nazionale, a national paper based in central Italy, reported yesterday that a Japanese doctor and his team had secretly flown from Tuscany to the Vatican on a helicopter bearing the Holy See’s white-and-yellow flag to examine the pope “some months ago.”
The article, under the headline “The Pope is Sick,” said the Argentine pontiff was diagnosed with “a small dark spot on the brain,” but that it was curable without surgery.
“I am able to confirm that the pope is in good health,” chief spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said in a statement that he read out during a news conference on another topic. He said he had checked the allegations directly with the pope and other Vatican officials.
“No Japanese doctor has visited the Pope in the Vatican and there have been no examinations of the type indicated in the article,” he said.
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