Catholics around the world will have been delighted at the news that Pope Francis is now recovering from his ailments. Progress has been slow, his doctors concede, but it seems to be measurable. No date has yet been set for him to leave Rome’s Gemelli hospital. Yet the presumption is certainly that he will do so. Given the touch-and-go nature of Francis’s condition during February, the sense of relief is palpable.
Francis’s illness catalysed a somewhat surreal experience for me as a papal historian. In my book Electing the Pope, I discussed at some length the complex economy of knowledge which has traditionally surrounded the pope’s health. Cardinals, ambassadors of Catholic powers, but also the Roman people themselves would go to extraordinary lengths to discover any fragment of information.
