Pope Leo XIV Walks Out of Gemelli Four Days After Lung Cancer Surgery — and Leads the Angelus Sunday

ROME

Four days after surgeons removed the lower lobe of his right lung, Pope Leo XIV walked out of Rome’s Agostino Gemelli Hospital on Saturday afternoon — ahead of schedule, on his own feet, and waving to the well-wishers gathered outside. According to OSV News and the Catholic Sun, the 71-year-old pontiff left the hospital at about 3:30 p.m., bringing a short, closely watched hospital stay to an unexpectedly early end. USA Today also reported the discharge, which came days before the roughly one-week recovery the Holy See had originally indicated.

There is a particular kind of relief that runs through the Catholic world when a pope leaves a hospital under his own power, and Saturday had it. Leo had announced the surgery himself, in his own words, at the Angelus on October 11 — a strikingly direct way for a pontiff to share medical news. He described the nodule as “well-contained” and “detected at a very early stage.” Four days after the operation, he was going home to the Vatican, and on Sunday he is scheduled to be back at the window of the Apostolic Palace to lead the Angelus.

Four Days, One Operation

The surgery took place on Tuesday, October 13. As the Vatican has described it, and as People and USA Today reported, it was a 90-minute video-assisted procedure in which surgeons removed the lower lobe of Leo’s right lung. Tissue analysis confirmed what the operation was treating: lung adenocarcinoma, the Vatican said, according to reporting by People and USA Today. Leo, a nonsmoker, is 71 years old.

The decision to discharge him on Saturday rested on the morning’s tests. In a Vatican statement reported by OSV News and USA Today, his doctors — Dr. Luigi Carbone and Professor Stefano Margaritora — said that morning blood tests and a chest X-ray showed the pope’s clinical condition allowed him to leave the hospital. That is the kind of plain, clinical sentence the Vatican rarely gets to issue about a pope four days after cancer surgery, and it explains the timing: OSV News noted the discharge came earlier than expected, since the Holy See had indicated a recovery of about a week when the surgery was announced.

Readers following the story since Tuesday can find our earlier coverage of his first night after the lung surgery, and the rest of the day’s reporting in the newsroom.

A Goodbye on the Tenth Floor

Before he left, Leo did what popes do even in hospital gowns: he celebrated Mass. According to OSV News, he celebrated Mass at the hospital before his departure — the second straight day he had done so. On Friday, October 16, he celebrated Mass on the hospital’s 10th floor together with medical and nursing staff and members of the Vatican Gendarmerie, the small police force that guards Vatican City. It is a telling detail about this pontificate that the last full day of a cancer hospital stay was spent saying Mass with the people who had been looking after him.

Then came the moment that will likely be remembered longest from this strange, anxious week. Before leaving, the pope greeted Varvara, a 13-year-old Ukrainian girl whom he had embraced in St. Peter’s Square last December, shortly before her own cancer surgery, according to OSV News. She gave him a printed photograph of that hug, and a handmade felt toy. Consider the symmetry of it: a teenager who faced cancer surgery last winter, bringing a picture of her own embrace to a 71-year-old pope leaving the hospital after his. The Vatican released no long statement about the meeting, and honestly, it did not need one.

Well-wishes also arrived through official channels. Italian President Sergio Mattarella sent his wishes to the pope, according to OSV News — a gesture that reflects how closely Italy watches the health of the bishop of Rome, who is also, in the texture of Italian public life, a neighbor.

Sunday: Back at the Window

The Vatican has confirmed the next public step, and it comes quickly. On Sunday, October 18, Leo will lead the Angelus prayer from the window of the Apostolic Palace, according to the Vatican, as reported by OSV News and USA Today. One week after he used that same Sunday appointment to tell the world he needed surgery, he will stand at that window again — this time as a man four days removed from an operation, already discharged, already back at work.

It would be easy to read the speed of all this as a signal that the episode is closed. The more careful reading is that the Vatican is presenting recovery in stages, and each stage so far has arrived ahead of the cautious schedule it set. The discharge was early. The Angelus is on. But important facts remain undisclosed, and they matter for what comes next.

What We Still Don’t Know

Reuters, as reported by USA Today, noted what the pope’s doctors have not disclosed: the size of the tumor, and whether the disease had spread to lymph nodes. Those two facts, more than any other, will shape the medical road ahead — whether further treatment is likely, how closely he will be monitored, and how the Vatican calibrates a schedule that, even before this week, was demanding for a man of 71.

For now, though, the headline is the simple one, and it is genuinely good news by any measure. A pope told his flock, plainly and personally, that doctors had found cancer early. Surgeons removed it. Four days later he celebrated Mass with his nurses, received a photograph and a felt toy from a young friend who knows exactly what he has been through, waved to the crowd outside Gemelli, and went home. Tomorrow, Sunday, he leads the Angelus. The rest of the story — the pathology details, the follow-up, the long watch that follows any cancer diagnosis — will be told in time. This weekend, the image is enough: Leo, waving, in the Roman afternoon light, ahead of schedule.