Vatican Pope Surgery
This picture, released by Vatican Media on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, shows Pope Leo XIV celebrating Mass at the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, where he is recovering after having cancer removed from his right lung.
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Pope Leo XIV has brought an American style of governing to the Vatican, including in the way it handles health crises. Not only did history’s first American pope announce himself that he had a lung nodule that required removal. But Leo’s doctors have been providing the medical updates for his recovery, not the Vatican. The written medical updates are spare, but provide authoritative information with a degree of accountability and transparency that is anathema to the Vatican. It's a far cry from the times of St. John Paul II, when his spokesman would tell some tall tales about his health that in retrospect seem hard to believe.