By Joshua McElwee
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis will on Thursday mark the 12th anniversary of his election as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, but he will do so from Rome’s Gemelli hospital where he has been treated for double pneumonia for almost a month.
The latest bulletins from the Vatican on the 88-year-old pope’s condition have said he is improving and is no longer in immediate danger. They have not said when he will be discharged from hospital.
Francis was elected pope by the world’s Roman Catholic cardinals on March 13, 2013. His continued stay in hospital – he was admitted on February 14 – is changing the tenor of how Catholics are celebrating the day.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, a senior Vatican official known as close to Francis, called the pope’s anniversary “a reason for gratitude”.
He said: “This year, his illness makes us especially aware (of the anniversary), especially grateful to God, and redoubling our prayers for his full recovery.”
Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, is the first pope from the Americas.
Elected pontiff at age 76, he moved quickly to make an impact. Over 12 years, he has reorganized the Vatican’s bureaucracy, written four major teaching documents, made 47 foreign trips to more than 65 countries, and created more than 900 saints.
Overall, Francis is widely seen as trying to open the staid global Church to the modern world.
Among major decisions, he has allowed priests to offer blessings to same-sex couples on a case-by-case basis and has appointed women to serve as leaders of Vatican offices for the first time.
He has also held five major Vatican summits of the world’s Catholic bishops to discuss contested issues such as women’s ordination and changing the Church’s sexual teachings.
David Gibson, a U.S. academic who has followed the papacy closely, said Francis “has come to seem like the indispensable pope” for many Catholics.
“Francis has really reset the expectations for what a pope should be: a pastor who welcomes all and judges no one of good will,” said Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture.
However, the pope’s agenda has upset some Catholics, including a few senior cardinals. They have accused him of watering-down the Church’s teachings on issues such as same-sex marriage and divorce and remarriage, and of focusing excessively on political issues such as climate change.
Some survivors of Catholic clergy sexual abuse have said he should do more to protect children in the Church.
While Francis created the first papal commission on the issue, survivors’ groups have questioned its effectiveness and have called on the pope to create firmer zero-tolerance policies.
‘WHAT OUR WORLD NEEDS’
Francis is known to work himself to exhaustion and has continued his work from hospital. But as he starts his 13th year as pope, it is unclear if he will be able to keep up his normal pace once he is discharged from hospital.
Doctors not involved in his care said he is likely to face a long, fraught road to recovery, given his age and other medical conditions, which have severely limited his mobility.
His prolonged public absence has stoked speculation that he could choose to follow his predecessor Benedict XVI and resign the papacy. But his friends and biographers have insisted he has no plans to step down.
Much of the pope’s schedule for 2025 centres around the Catholic Holy Year, which has filled his calendar with audiences with groups of pilgrims coming to Rome. The Church expects 32 million pilgrims during the year.
Francis has also been planning at least one foreign trip. He wants to travel to Turkey for the celebration of the 1,700th anniversary of a major Christian council of bishops in ancient Nicaea, now the modern day town of Iznik.
Vatican officials expect he will push to make the trip, even if it must be postponed beyond May, when it was planned.
Many Catholics are also hoping Francis will continue speaking out on political issues known as important to him, such as the treatment of immigrants, and on global conflicts.
Just three days before going into hospital, Francis sharply criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in an unusual open letter to America’s Catholic bishops.
“Pope Francis has offered the world both vision and leadership,” said Marie Dennis, a Vatican adviser and former leader of an international Catholic organization focused on issues of world peace.
“He is exactly what our broken, violent, confused world needs right now,” she said.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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