• Church Pope discharged from hospital and returns to Vatican: "I was not afraid"

The Pope confessed in a private telephone conversation that when he was admitted for bronchitis of infectious origin in the Gemelli hospital in Rome before Holy Week he arrived by ambulance "unconscious" and that if "a few more hours" had passed he would not have "been able to tell it".

"He explained to me that he arrived unconscious at the hospital. And that a few more hours would have been enough, and I did not know if I could tell it, "revealed the Italian Michele Ferri, brother of Andrea, a merchant shot dead in the city of Pesaro on June 3, 2013 after a robbery perpetrated by one of his own employees.

Since the murder 10 years ago, the pope has shown his closeness to the Ferri family and has never interrupted their usual late-night phone calls, even welcoming them to a private audience at the Vatican.

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"I had lost consciousness. I had a very bad time," Ferri told the pope, according to the Italian newspaper 'Il resto del Carlino'.

However, Ferri has assured that the Pope's voice "was fit, it was sonorous and serene". "I listened to him better than when he called me in January and I thought he was more tired," Ferri said.

When he was discharged, after four days in the hospital where he underwent all kinds of examinations and health checks, the Pope joked with journalists: "I am still alive."

The Vatican press office has downplayed this medical episode. In the first communiqué it was even reported that the Pontiff was in the Gemelli Hospital for routine checks previously scheduled.

  • Pope Francis I
  • the Vatican

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