The Vatican announced on Friday that Pope Francis is recovering from double pneumonia, but he will not lead an annual Church ceremony next week to signal the beginning of the Christian season of Lent.
The 88-year-old Catholic pontiff has already spent two weeks in Rome’s Gemelli hospital, where he was taken on February 14 with a serious respiratory infection that caused additional complications.
The Vatican has not indicated how long the pope will stay in the hospital, but it did announce on Friday that Francis would not lead the traditional Ash Wednesday ceremony on March 5, indicating that his confinement could extend into next week.
The regular Church ceremony, which is 40 days before Easter Sunday, was instead left to a senior Vatican official.
In a medical update on Thursday, the Vatican announced that the pope’s condition was improving, but his prognosis was uncertain due to the complexity of his illness.
Francis, pope since 2013 and frequently portrayed as pushing himself to the point of exhaustion, has continued to direct the Vatican from the hospital.
