On Friday morning, Pope Francis was discharged from the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, where on 7 June he had been hospitalized and operated on for an intestinal obstruction. The occlusion had been caused by an incisional hernia, i.e. a hernia that forms over a scar resulting from a previous abdominal operation. The operation had lasted almost three hours and there had been no complications: last Wednesday the press office of the Holy See let it be known that the pope was in good health.
Pope Francis is 86 years old and in the past he had already had various health problems: in the summer of 2021 he was hospitalized for a colon operation, and for fifty years he has been living without a large part of his right lung, lost as a result of an infection contracted when young. He has also been suffering from pain in his right knee for some time which leads him to rely on a wheelchair for most of his movements.