Pope Francis cancels trip to the UN climate summit on doctor’s orders
Pope Francis will not attend the United Nations climate summit in Dubai later this week on orders from his doctor, the Vatican said on Tuesday.
Although the pope’s general health improved after a bout of flu and pneumonia, his doctors had asked Francis to take it easy, the Vatican said in a statement.
“Pope Francis regretfully accepted the doctors’ request and the trip has been canceled,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said.
Francis was due to begin a three-day visit to Dubai on Friday to attend the climate summit, known by the acronym COP28. The Vatican said it would look for ways to ensure that the pope and the Holy See could be “part of the discussions taking place in the coming days,” without specifying how.
Francis’ health has caused concern in recent years. The pope, who turns 87 next month, has been hospitalized three times in two years, most recently in June when surgeons operated on an inguinal hernia, usually the result of previous operations, that caused painful intestinal blockages. He also underwent intestinal surgery in 2021 and was hospitalized due to a respiratory infection in March this year.
On Saturday, Francis canceled meetings due to mild flu-like symptoms. The Vatican said the pope had gone to a hospital in Rome for a CT scan to rule out the risk of lung complications. The test was negative and the Pope returned to the Vatican.
Mr Bruni said on Monday that while the scan had ruled out pneumonia, it had detected inflammation in the pope’s lungs causing breathing difficulties. Francis was given intravenous antibiotics, he said. Francis lost part of a lung due to an infection as a teenager.
On Sunday, Francis did not recite the Angelus prayer and blessing from a window in the Apostolic Palace, as he usually does, to the crowd waiting below in St. Peter’s Square. Instead, he spoke from a chapel in the Casa Santa Martathe guesthouse where the Pope lives in Vatican City, as the faithful watched on large screens in the square.
“Today I can’t come to the window because I have a problem with inflammation of the lungs,” Francis said.
More than a hundred other world leaders will appear at the climate summit, including King Charles III, President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain.
Francis has made climate activism a hallmark of his papacy and is calling on world leaders to do everything in their power to tackle climate change. In October, he released a major new document lamenting the limited progress made since his groundbreaking 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si,” or “All Praise Be to You,” sought to put the Catholic Church at the forefront of the environmental movement.