Pope Leo XIV underwent surgery to remove a lung nodule on Tuesday, and the Vatican said the operation was “successful, as planned, and as planned.”
Leo, 71, returned to his room after surgery at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, according to a statement from a Vatican spokesman, who promised to provide more information later.
Earlier in the day, Leo walked into Rome’s Gemelli hospital from the main entrance and waved to dozens of well-wishers who had gathered to greet him. The Vatican said the surgery will be performed by a team led by Dr. Stefano Margaritora, Gemelli’s chief thoracic surgeon.
The operation began on Tuesday night as medical staff recited the rosary in the hospital chapel. Cardinal Baldassar Reina, a priest in Rome, said at the beginning of the prayer: “Let us pray together that the Lord may support our Bishop, Pope Leo, and comfort all those who are hospitalized here.”
The American pope has provided rare transparency on the first major health issues he has publicly disclosed in his 17 months as pontiff. He revealed the discovery of the localized nodule during Sunday noon prayers and announced that he would have it removed.
Oncologists said that even if the nodule turned out to be cancerous, Leo’s prognosis was “excellent” because it would have been removed at an early stage.
The operation is usually performed under general anesthesia and requires a week’s hospitalization, and the Vatican on Monday canceled all audiences with Leo until October 20.
“If the words he uses reflect the clinical situation, then these problems can be treated very well,” said Dr. Lorenzo Spaggiari, chief of thoracic surgery at the European Institute of Oncology (EIO) in Milan, who was not involved in the pope’s care but knows Gemelli’s team.
But the decision was apparently surprising: While Gemelli owns the specific papal apartment used by past popes and has a private chapel on the tenth floor, Leo will actually live in a room nearby because the papal apartment is currently undergoing renovations, according to the Vatican press office.
Tests will determine if more treatment is needed
During the surgery, the doctor also removes the lymph nodes that drain the segment or lobe of the lung. “If all those lymph node results are negative, stage one, then the outlook is very good,” he said, adding that no other treatment is needed.
The Vatican said the nodule was discovered during a regular check-up.
“I think he had a little bit of luck. They found something asymptomatic – a lung nodule, possibly a tumor. He might have called it something else; we called it luck,” he said.
Economic recovery may allow travel to South America in November
The EIO advises patients not to fly for three weeks after surgery, giving the pope enough time to visit Uruguay, Argentina and Peru as planned from November 6 to 17, depending on his recovery. The current trip is ambitious and the longest of his tenure, requiring Leo to cover more than 31,000 kilometers (19,000 miles) through a dozen flights and two helicopter flights, with significant elevation changes in Peru.
Tokyo Cardinal Tsutomu Kikuchi, who saw Leo on Monday, said: “He decided to have surgery as soon as possible so as not to change his plans for future overseas travel, so there is no need to worry because it is not an emergency.”
Pulmonary nodules are small abnormal areas less than 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) that sometimes appear on CT scans of the chest or abdomen. Typically, scans are done to investigate trauma or lung infection and are not related to lung cancer screening. A nodule can be benign or malignant, and surgical removal is often recommended to determine if it is cancer and to treat the malignancy while it is still localized.
In 1985, the Pope was hospitalized with typhoid fever
This is believed to be the second time Leo has been hospitalized and he is known to be active and in good health, taking part in weekly tennis matches and swimming.
In 1985, as a young missionary, he fell ill with typhoid fever shortly after arriving in Chulucanas, Peru. The illness and hospitalization were a cathartic moment for him, and after living a life of relative comfort in Rome, he decided to stay in poverty and discomfort in Peru—a decision that ultimately paved the way for his pontificate, according to Leo’s interview with Elise Ann Allen in the 2025 book “Pope Leo XIV: A Biography.”
According to the book, Leo said he prayed to God to let him die rather than suffer the “terrible” pain of a fever. “I hooked up the IV and I said, ‘Lord, if this is your sense of humor, I think you can do a little better.'”
“Obviously, I survived; I recovered, but it was a very important moment for me because it was like, ‘Okay, you’ve dealt with the disease; you’ve seen what the needs are here—the orders, the Augustinians, the church telling you, ‘We need you here;'” I never looked back. “