---
title: "Back at the Window: Leo XIV Blesses the Square Five Days After Losing Part of a Lung"
description: "From the same balcony where he announced his operation, the pope told thousands he will “gradually resume” his duties"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-10-18T15:15:04Z
modified: 2026-10-18T20:45:41Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/the-pope-is-back-at-his-window-five-days-after-losing-part-o-4885e9
language: en
tags: ["cancer", "health", "vatican", "pope", "rome", "world"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Back at the Window: Leo XIV Blesses the Square Five Days After Losing Part of a Lung

*From the same balcony where he announced his operation, the pope told thousands he will “gradually resume” his duties*

By Jan Sokol · October 18, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/the-pope-is-back-at-his-window-five-days-after-losing-part-o-4885e9

## In brief

- Pope Leo XIV led the Sunday Angelus from the Apostolic Palace window, his first public appearance since lung cancer surgery
- He said he would “gradually resume” his duties and thanked Gemelli hospital staff and those who prayed for him
- Surgeons removed the lower lobe of his right lung Tuesday; tests confirmed adenocarcinoma; he was discharged Saturday after four nights
- His surgeon sees “no clinical reasons” to block the Nov 6-17 trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, expecting full recovery in about 10 days
- Doctors await tumor and lymph-node test results to decide on further treatment; no prognosis has been made public

ROME — The window above St. Peter’s Square is a small thing to build a week around, but for seven days the Catholic world measured time by it. Last Sunday, from that window, Pope Leo XIV told the crowd that doctors had found a nodule on his lung and that he would undergo an operation. This Sunday, [according to CNN’s Christopher Lamb](https://cnn.com/2026/10/18/europe/pope-angelus-sunday-cancer-intl), he came back to the same window of the Apostolic Palace — unaided, [the *Guardian* noted](https://theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/18/pope-leo-resume-activities-removal-lung-cancer-tumour), his voice firm — and led the noon Angelus before thousands who clapped and sang below. Five days had passed since surgeons removed the lower lobe of his right lung. One day had passed since he left the hospital.

The Rome marathon was winding through the city that morning, and runners came jogging up the great walkway toward the square, turning right past the papal residence. At midday the spectacle yielded to the older one: a 71-year-old man at a window, wishing the crowd a happy Sunday.

“This experience has given me a profound sense of closeness to all those who are going through illness or a state of infirmity,” he told them. “Now that this delicate phase has passed, I will gradually resume my activities – always with the help of God and your prayers. Thank you once again.” He thanked the doctors, the nurses, all the staff of the Gemelli hospital, and everyone who had prayed. Then he paused, waved — [the Associated Press reported](https://cbsnews.com/news/pope-leo-cancer-surgery-resume-activities-vatican/) — and withdrew into his apartment.

## The week in between

What happened between those two Sundays was swift even by the standards of a brisk pontificate. The surgery itself, on Tuesday, lasted about 90 minutes. Surgeons used a video-assisted technique and took not merely the nodule but the whole lower lobe of the right lung; tissue examined afterward confirmed adenocarcinoma, the most common form of lung cancer — roughly 40 percent of all cases in the United States, [NPR reported](https://npr.org/2026/10/17/nx-s1-6006762/pope-leo-xiv-leaves-hospital-days-after-lung-cancer-surgery), citing the Lung Cancer Foundation of America, and the most common among nonsmokers too. Leo is not known to have smoked. But cancer runs in the family: his mother, Mildred, died of it in 1990, and on the very day of his operation the Vatican announced that his older brother Louis, in Florida, had been hospitalized with a cancer of his own — multiple myeloma, his wife told CBS News.

![A watercolor depicts a pope waving from an open Vatican window to a crowd in sunlit St. Peter’s Square.](https://rews.cc/img/f81a543182037ef63680b95eb303f2b6dbd1d19e.webp)

The Vatican had estimated a week in the Gemelli. He stayed four nights. On Saturday morning came blood tests and a chest X-ray; the doctors deemed him fit for discharge, and before leaving he celebrated Mass in a room set aside for the purpose on the hospital’s tenth floor. Video showed him walking out without physical support, flanked by officials and dark-suited security, waving to well-wishers. To a reporter, in English, he said he was doing “much better.” Matteo Bruni, the Vatican spokesman, put the estimated post-operative recovery at about one week.

Doctors outside the pope’s care read the signs as encouraging. “The fact that surgery was the first tool that they utilized is a really good sign,” Dr. Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist and board member of the American Lung Association, told NPR. “It suggests that they think this is early stage.” Removing the larger portion of lung, he added, is not in itself alarming: “People have parts of their lungs removed all the time for all sorts of reasons, and they recover just fine.”

![Layered teal paper lungs with cream branching airways and pale green leaves rest on a peach background, with gold stitches along one lung’s lower edge.](https://rews.cc/img/d78cd157ed86de86d4077a67a19bc0a140ef3507.webp)

## The hospital that knows popes

The Gemelli, in Rome’s north-west, is practiced at this strange double role of clinic and court. John Paul II stayed there so often that the Vatican and the hospital together built a high-security papal suite. Leo’s surgeon was Professor Stefano Margaritora, the hospital’s chief of thoracic surgery; his personal physician, Dr. Luigi Carbone, co-signed the discharge statement. Even from a hospital bed the machinery of the papacy did not stop: on Friday the pope telephoned Vladimir Putin and urged a ceasefire in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Oleshky.

Not everything was serene. [The *South China Morning Post* reported](https://scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3371256/pope-leo-leave-hospital-saturday-after-lung-cancer-surgery?module=top_story&pgtype=homepage) that some cardinals had begun to speak their concern aloud, and that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the secretary of state, said Friday the pope may need to adjust the pace of his schedule “according to the condition of his health” — an unusual thing for a cardinal to say openly about a reigning pope. The doctors, for their part, have disclosed neither the tumor’s size nor whether the disease reached the nearby lymph nodes, the facts on which a prognosis turns. No prognosis has been made public. Histological testing of the tumor and lymph nodes is under way; depending on the results and the tumor’s genetic makeup, the Vatican’s options range from chemotherapy, to chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy, to targeted oral therapy. On Wednesday the doctors said only that recovery was proceeding normally.

![A watercolor shows an empty wheelchair in a hospital room as a white-robed religious figure walks through open glass doors into a sunlit garden.](https://rews.cc/img/2e43890c0e9378f93e49b547ff44ada5f8c68fe5.webp)

## The mountain at the end of the calendar

What hangs over the recovery is the trip already printed in the calendar: November 6 to 17, Uruguay, Argentina and Peru — a dozen flights and two helicopter rides, one of the most intense itineraries arranged for a pope in decades. Peru is Leo’s second country; he served there as missionary and bishop for years and holds its citizenship. The route includes Cusco, some 3,350 meters above sea level, where each breath delivers roughly a third less oxygen than at the coast — a stern test for a man newly short a lobe of lung.

Margaritora, asked by Vatican News, was unmoved. “As a result, he needed very little assistance from us,” he [told Vatican News](https://ms.now/news/pope-leo-lung-cancer-vatican), as MS NOW reported, after saying the Holy Father had put his heart and soul into his recovery “as the most motivated people do after this kind of operation.” “His determination to recover quickly has been effective in every respect. It was truly commendable.” There were, he said, “no clinical reasons” why the journey should not take place, and he expected full recovery from the surgery “in another 10 days or so.” Outside specialists agreed in principle: most patients may travel about two weeks after such minimally invasive surgery, said Dr. Jonathan Villena Vargas of Weill Cornell; “I think he can do it,” said Dr. Otis Brawley of Johns Hopkins, noting that fit patients are very frequently back to normal in seven to ten days. Leo, before all this, played tennis each week with his personal secretary and rode horses at Castel Gandolfo. The Vatican, signaling resolve, released the list of journalists accredited to fly with him.

![An open suitcase holds white papal clothing beside a winding travel route across a globe, with Vatican architecture and an airplane in the watercolor background.](https://rews.cc/img/fe2d4c43c9eb18c851c546af7e9ce8bc0fd6406d.webp)

## The square answers

In the square on Sunday the mood was closer to a homecoming than a vigil. A delegation from Africa, in Rome for a congress, danced and ululated after the blessing. “He was always in our prayers when he was sick, and we are happy to see him today,” said Alain Kalembu of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “This is an expression of our joy.” Cosimo Mastrocinque, a retired factory worker up from Puglia, could not quite credit the speed of it: “It is a miracle that he recovered already.” Americans had come to pray with the first pope born in the United States — Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago, elected in May of last year after the death of Francis. “I am just happy that we are praying with him today instead of for him, like we were before,” said Marla Marsala of Michigan, whose Mass with the pope last week had been cancelled by the hospitalization. Claire Holland of Jacksonville, Florida, said she felt “very blessed.”

Even Washington sent its regards across old battle lines. President Trump, [Newsweek reported](https://newsweek.com/pope-leo-says-he-has-overcome-delicate-phase-after-cancer-surgery-12585364), told reporters before departing Arizona on Thursday: “I want to see Pope Leo get well… We just want to wish him our love and our best wishes.” The two have been publicly at odds over the Iran war and immigration; the president added that the pope’s brother and his wife “are big Trump supporters,” and that this was “good enough for me.” Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, wrote that his family prayed for the pope’s full recovery and sent best wishes to “a true American original and great guy, Lou Prevost,” facing his own illness.

There is an old understanding between popes and balconies: the man above, the multitude below, and between them the unspoken knowledge that the office is eternal and the man is not. On Sunday the understanding held. The window opened; the crowd roared; the pope, thinner in the chest by one lobe, said he would return to work gradually — always, he said, with God’s help and their prayers. The tests that will say what comes next are still in the laboratory.

## Sources

- [Pope Leo leads Sunday prayers in first major public appearance since lung cancer surgery](https://cnn.com/2026/10/18/europe/pope-angelus-sunday-cancer-intl) — cnn.com
- [Pope Leo to gradually resume papal activities since removal of cancerous tumour](https://theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/18/pope-leo-resume-activities-removal-lung-cancer-tumour) — theguardian.com
- [Pope Leo says he will "gradually resume my activities" after cancer surgery](https://cbsnews.com/news/pope-leo-cancer-surgery-resume-activities-vatican/) — cbsnews.com
- [Pope Leo XIV leaves hospital days after lung cancer surgery](https://npr.org/2026/10/17/nx-s1-6006762/pope-leo-xiv-leaves-hospital-days-after-lung-cancer-surgery) — npr.org
- [Pope Leo to leave hospital on Saturday, 4 days after lung cancer surgery](https://scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3371256/pope-leo-leave-hospital-saturday-after-lung-cancer-surgery?module=top_story&pgtype=homepage) — scmp.com
- [Pope Leo XIV leads public prayer 5 days after lung cancer surgery](https://ms.now/news/pope-leo-lung-cancer-vatican) — ms.now
- [Pope Leo Gives Health Update After Lung Cancer Surgery](https://newsweek.com/pope-leo-says-he-has-overcome-delicate-phase-after-cancer-surgery-12585364) — newsweek.com
- [Pope Leo says he will gradually resume duties after cancer surgery](https://npr.org/2026/10/18/g-s1-148654/pope-leo-says-he-will-gradually-resume-duties-after-cancer-surgery) — npr.org