Pope Francis has often spoken and written about illness, ageing, and death, and has personally instructed his doctors to provide detailed daily updates on his battle with pneumonia.
On Monday, his doctors reported that the 88-year-old pontiff was no longer in imminent danger but would remain hospitalised for treatment for several more days.
Francis's openness about his health echoes the legacy of St John Paul II, whose struggle with Parkinson’s disease was publicly visible for years.
However, the Vatican did not acknowledge the condition until after his death.
In keeping with his papacy, Francis has been upfront about his health. In 2021, he gave an unprecedentedly candid interview to an Argentine doctor, who published a book detailing the pontiff's physical and mental health history.
Last week, Francis recorded an audio message from the hospital, revealing the weakness in his voice and the effort required to speak.
Here are a few of Francis’s thoughts on illness and death.
On ageing
Pope Francis has consistently voiced concerns about society's treatment of the elderly, decrying what he sees as a "throwaway culture" that marginalises them once they are no longer deemed productive.
The pontiff has been particularly outspoken about the importance of including older people in the life of the church, a stance he emphasised during Pope Benedict XVI's 10-year retirement.
Even as he has aged, and now relies on a wheelchair and walker, Francis' views on ageing have remained consistent. In his 2010 book On Heaven and Earth, co-written with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Francis criticised the cruelty faced by the elderly, calling out families who neglect their grandparents by sending them to nursing homes and failing to visit.
“The elderly are sources of the transmission of history, the people who give us memories, they are the memory of the people, of a nation, of the family and of the culture, religion,” said Francis, who at the time was the archbishop of Buenos Aires.
On death in general
In the same book, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio recalled that his grandmother Rosa, who helped raise him, had the words of an adage framed on her bedside table that stayed with him all his life: “See that God sees you, see that he is watching you, see that you will die and you don’t know when.”
He referred to the saying again in 2018 in a speech to priests, and that his grandmother had instructed him to recite it every day “‘so you will remember that life has an end’”.
“I didn’t understand much at the time, but that verse, since I was three years old, has stuck with me,” he told the priests. “And it helped me. The thing was kind of bleak, but it helped me.”
On his own mental and physical health
Francis disclosed that he underwent weekly psychiatric sessions during Argentina's military dictatorship to manage his anxiety, as revealed in Dr Nelson Castro's 2021 book, The Health of Popes.
During an interview with Dr Castro, the pontiff spoke in detail about his past ailments, including a respiratory infection that resulted in the removal of the upper lobe of his right lung, a gangrenous gallbladder, compressed vertebrae, flat feet, and a fatty liver.
The most noteworthy revelation was Francis's disclosure that he sought psychiatric help to manage his anxiety while hiding people from the military and helping them leave Argentina.
"In those six months she helped me with respect to how to manage the fears of that time," he told Dr Castro.
"If you can imagine what it was like to transport someone hidden in the car — covered by a blanket — and pass through military controls … It created an enormous tension in me."
He added that the therapy helped him maintain equilibrium in making decisions and that he believes all priests must understand human psychology.
On his own death
Pope Francis has been contemplating his mortality since the early years of his papacy, suggesting as early as 2014 that his time in office would be brief.
During a trip home from South Korea in 2014, he told reporters, "I realise that this is not going to last long, two or three years, and then … off to the house of the Father."
The pontiff reportedly told Fidel Castro that while he frequently thinks about death, it holds no fear for him.
Francis has also made arrangements for his final resting place, choosing to be buried in the St. Mary Major basilica rather than the Vatican. This decision allows him to be near his beloved icon of the Madonna, the Salus Populi Romani ("Salvation of the People of Rome").
More recently, he has alluded to future events that he anticipates he will not be present for, even hinting at potential successors. In 2023, regarding the Vatican's improving relationship with Vietnam, Francis agreed that the country would be a fitting destination for a papal visit.
“If I don’t go, surely John XXIV will,” he said chuckling, referring to a future pope who might be named for the progressive, Vatican II-era pontiff, John XXIII.
