Vatican gives update on Pope Francis’ condition as Holy Year celebrations march on without him

The Vatican carried on with its Holy Year celebrations on Saturday without Pope Francis, who remains hospitalized as he battles pneumonia and a complex respiratory infection.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni provided the shortest update yet on Saturday: “The Pope rested well.”

Doctors on Friday said the 88-year-old Francis is “not out of danger” and that the main threat facing him would be the onset of sepsis, a serious infection of the blood that can occur as a complication of pneumonia.

“Sepsis, with his respiratory problems and his age, would be really difficult to get out of,” said Dr. Sergio Alfieri, the head of medicine and surgery at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, at a press conference on Friday. “The English say ‘knock on wood,’ we say ‘touch iron.’ Everyone touch what they want,” he said as he tapped the microphone. “But this is the real risk in these cases: that these germs pass to the bloodstream.”

As of Friday, there was no evidence of any sepsis, and the pope was responding to the various drugs he is taking.

“He is not out of danger,” said his personal physician, Dr. Luigi Carboni. “So like all fragile patients, I say they are always on the golden scale: In other words, it takes very little to become unbalanced.”

Francis, who has chronic lung disease, was admitted to Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14 after a weeklong bout of bronchitis worsened.

Doctors first diagnosed the complex viral, bacterial and fungal respiratory tract infection and then the onset of pneumonia in both lungs. They prescribed “absolute rest” and a combination of cortisone and antibiotics, along with supplemental oxygen when he needs it.

Carbone, who along with Francis’ personal nurse Massimiliano Strappetti organized care for him at the Vatican, acknowledged he had insisted on staying at the Vatican to work, even after he was sick, “because of institutional and private commitments.” He was cared for by a cardiologist and infectious specialist in addition to his personal medical team before being hospitalized.

“He knows he’s in danger,” Alfieri added. “And he told us to relay that.”

Deacons, meanwhile, were gathering at the Vatican for their special Jubilee weekend. Francis got sick at the start of the Vatican’s Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration of Catholicism. This weekend, Francis was supposed to have celebrated deacons, a ministry in the church that precedes ordination to the priesthood.

In his place, the Holy Year organizer will celebrate Sunday’s Mass, the Vatican said. And for the second weekend in a row, Francis was expected to skip his traditional Sunday noon blessing, which he could have delivered from Gemelli if he were up to it.

“Look, even though he’s not (physically) here, we know he’s here,” said Luis Arnaldo Lopez Quirindongo, a deacon from Ponce, Puerto Rico who was at the Vatican on Saturday for the Jubilee celebration. “He’s recovering, but he’s in our hearts and is accompanying us because our prayers and his go together.”

As his hospital stay drags on, some of Francis’ cardinals have begun responding to the obvious question: whether Francis might resign if he becomes irreversibly sick and unable to carry on. Francis has said he would consider it, after Pope Benedict XVI “opened the door” to popes retiring, but has shown no signs of stepping down and in fact has asserted recently that the job of pope is for life