Pope Leo XIV, 71, underwent a successful operation Tuesday to remove a lung nodule, with the Vatican saying the procedure was completed as planned and the pontiff had returned to his room afterward.
The 71-year-old Leo returned to his room after the surgery at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, according to a statement from the Vatican spokesman, who promised further information at a later time.
Leo had walked into Rome's Gemelli hospital through the main entrance earlier in the day and waved to dozens of well-wishers who had gathered to greet him. The Vatican said the surgery would be performed by a team led by Gemelli’s chief thoracic surgeon, Dr. Stefano Margaritora.
The operation got under way as medical staff recited the Rosary prayer in the hospital chapel Tuesday evening. "Let us join together in prayer, asking the Lord to sustain our bishop, Pope Leo, and to comfort all those who are hospitalized here,” said the Vicar of Rome, Cardinal Baldassare Reina, at the start of the prayer.
The American pontiff has offered a rare level of transparency about the first publicly disclosed major health problem of his 17-month papacy . He revealed the discovery of the small, localized nodule during his Sunday noon prayer and announced that he would have it removed.
Oncologists say even if the nodule turns out to be cancerous, Leo’s prognosis is "excellent” since it will have been removed at an early stage.
The surgery, which is usually performed under general anesthesia, will require a weeklong hospital stay and the Vatican on Monday canceled all Leo’s audiences through Oct. 20.
"These are things that can be treated very well, if the words he used reflect the clinical situation,” said Dr. Lorenzo Spaggiari, director of thoracic surgery at the European Institute of Oncology, or EIO, in Milan, who is not involved in the pope’s care but knows the team at Gemelli.
But the decision clearly came as a surprise: While Gemelli has a specific papal apartment that past popes have used, complete with a private chapel on the 10th floor, Leo will actually be staying in a nearby room since the papal apartment is currently undergoing renovations, according to the Vatican press office.
Spaggiari said he expected the team at Gemelli would perform a biopsy to determine whether Leo has lung cancer followed by the removal of a section or lobe of the lung where the nodule is located.
Both could be done using robotic techniques, and could be performed consecutively, under the same anesthesia, with different specialist teams, Spaggiari said.
A sophisticated robotic bronchoscopy technology called ION allows a biopsy on nodules as small as 3 millimeters (1/10 inch), Spaggiari said. Both the Gemelli and the EIO have the technology, which has been available in Italy for just two years.
Gemelli also has robotic surgical technology, allowing the operation to remove the nodule to proceed "using a minimally invasive technique,” he said.
The technique involves the surgeon making four small incisions in the chest through which the instruments of the so-called da Vinci robot are inserted, he said. The surgeon then controls the robotic arms looking at a screen providing high-definition, 3D views of the surgical site.
"It’s a very well-established technology. This is something we have been doing for 20 years,” he said.
It wasn't known for certain what technique would be used on Leo. Gemelli has documented using both robotic procedures to diagnose and operate in under four hours.
The biopsy risk is "virtually zero,” while the surgical risk is very small, carrying a 0.6% to 0.8% mortality rate for patients in otherwise good health with good heart and lung function, Spaggiari said.
During the surgery, doctors would also remove lymph nodes that drain the segment or lobe. "If all those lymph nodes turn out to be negative, so stage one, then the outlook is very good,” he said, adding that no other treatment would be necessary.
The nodule was discovered during regular checks, the Vatican has said.
"I think he has had a bit of luck. They found something that was asymptomatic - a lung nodule, possibly a tumor. He might call it something else; we call it luck,” he said.
EIO advises patients not to fly for three weeks after surgery - which would give the pope just the interval needed to make his planned Nov. 6-17 trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, depending on his recovery. The current itinerary for the trip is ambitious and the longest of his papacy to date, calling for Leo to clock just over 31,000 kilometers (19,000 miles) on a dozen flights and two helicopter rides, and a significant altitude change in Peru.
"He has decided to undergo surgery soon in order to not change his plans for future overseas trips, so there is no need to worry, as it is not an emergency,” said Tokyo Cardinal Kikuchi Tsutomu, who saw Leo on Monday.
A lung nodule is a small abnormal area measuring less than 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) that sometimes appears on a CT scan of the chest or abdomen. Often, the scans are done to investigate trauma or a lung infection, unrelated to a lung cancer screening. A nodule can be benign or malignant, and oftentimes surgical removal is recommended both to establish whether it is cancer and to treat a malignancy while it is still localized.
This is believed to be the second hospitalization for Leo, who is known to be sporty and in good shape, with weekly tennis games and swimming.
As a young missionary priest, he came down with typhoid fever in 1985, soon after arriving in Chulucanas, Peru. The illness and hospitalization were a cathartic moment for him to decide to stay in the poverty and discomfort of Peru after living in relative comfort in Rome - a decision that ultimately paved the way to his papacy, according to an interview Leo gave to Elise Ann Allen in 2025 for "Pope Leo XIV: The Biography.”
According to the book, Leo said he prayed to God to let him die rather than suffer the "horrible” pain of the fever. "I was hooked up to an IV, and I said, ‘If this is your sense of humor, Lord, I think you could do a little better.’
"Obviously, I survived; I recovered, but it turned out to be a very significant moment for me, because it was like, ’Well, you’ve already dealt with the illness; you already see what the needs are here - the order, the Augustinians, the church are telling you, ‘We need you here; go for it.’ I never looked back.”
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Barry reported from Milan.
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