Updated on: February 22, 2025 / 7:22 PM EST / CBS/AP
Pope Francis was in critical condition Saturday after he suffered a long asthmatic respiratory crisis that required high flows of oxygen, the Vatican said.
The 88-year-old Francis, who has been hospitalized for a week with a complex lung infection, also received blood transfusions after tests showed a condition associated with anemia, the Vatican said in a late update. Earlier in the day, the Vatican said that Francis had “rested well” overnight.
“The Holy Father continues to be alert and spent the day in an armchair although in more pain than yesterday. At the moment the prognosis is reserved,” the statement said.
Doctors on Friday said the 88-year-old Francis is “not out of danger,” and that the main threat facing him would be the onset of sepsis, a serious infection of the blood that can occur as a complication of pneumonia.
“Sepsis, with his respiratory problems and his age, would be really difficult to get out of,” said Dr. Sergio Alfieri, the head of medicine and surgery at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, at a press conference on Friday. “The English say ‘knock on wood,’ we say ‘touch iron.’ Everyone touch what they want,” he said as he tapped the microphone. “But this is the real risk in these cases: that these germs pass to the bloodstream.”
In a brief earlier update on Saturday, Francis slept well overnight.
A woman lays a rosary near candles adorned with pictures of Pope Francis outside the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic where Pope Francis is battling pneumonia, in Rome, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025,Gregorio Borgia / AP
The Vatican carried on with its Holy Year celebrations without the pope on Saturday.
Doctors first diagnosed the complex viral, bacterial and fungal respiratory tract infection and then the onset of pneumonia in both lungs. They prescribed “absolute rest” and a combination of cortisone and antibiotics, along with supplemental oxygen when he needs it.
Surgeon Sergio Alfieri, right, and Pope Francis personal doctor Luigi Carboni speak to journalists, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025, in the entrance hall of Rome’s Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic where Pope Francis is being treated for pneumonia.Alessandra Tarantino / AP
Carboni, who along with Francis’ personal nurse Massimiliano Strappetti organized care for him at the Vatican, acknowledged he had insisted on staying at the Vatican to work, even after he was sick, “because of institutional and private commitments.” He was cared for by a cardiologist and infectious specialist in addition to his personal medical team before being hospitalized.
Deacons, meanwhile, were gathering at the Vatican for their special Jubilee weekend. Francis got sick at the start of the Vatican’s Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration of Catholicism. This weekend, Francis was supposed to have celebrated deacons, a ministry in the church that precedes ordination to the priesthood.
Pilgrims wait to walk along the Via della Conciliazione in Rome to reach the Holy Door of St. Peter’s basilica in the Vatican, as part of the Catholic Jubilee Year, on February 22, 2025.ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP via Getty Images
In his place, the Holy Year organizer will celebrate Sunday’s Mass, the Vatican said. And for the second weekend in a row, Francis was expected to skip his traditional Sunday noon blessing, which he could have delivered from Gemelli if he were up to it.
“Look, even though he’s not (physically) here, we know he’s here,” said Luis Arnaldo Lopez Quirindongo, a deacon from Ponce, Puerto Rico who was at the Vatican on Saturday for the Jubilee celebration. “He’s recovering, but he’s in our hearts and is accompanying us because our prayers and his go together.”
Beyond that, doctors have said Francis’ recovery will take time and that regardless he will still have to live with his chronic respiratory problems back at the Vatican.
As his hospital stay drags on, some of Francis’ cardinals have begun responding to the obvious question: whether Francis might resign if he becomes irreversibly sick and unable to carry on. Francis has said he would consider it, after Pope Benedict XVI “opened the door” to popes retiring, but has shown no signs of stepping down and in fact has asserted recently that the job of pope is for life.
Francis made some mention of global conflicts in an address published on Sunday. Monday will mark three years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Francis called the anniversary “a painful and shameful occasion for all of humanity.” The pope reiterated support for “the martyred Ukrainian people.”
“I invite you to remember the victims of all armed conflicts,” the pope wrote. “And to pray for the gift of peace in Palestine, Israel, and throughout the Middle East, in Myanmar, in Kivu, and in Sudan.”
The northern economy minister (for the time being), Conor Murphy, has warned that the introduction of the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) scheme for non-EU travellers to Northern Ireland from this month – and to non-Irish EU travellers from April – “will have a devastating impact on tourism in the north of Ireland”.
While the process to obtain an ETA seems straightforward and the cost of £10 per person appears not too onerous, it still is a deterrent for tourists to cross the border, one of many since the partition of Ireland in 1921.
Following partition, there was some co-operation between the two Irish jurisdictions on tourism and other matters, mainly amongst civil servants behind closed doors though.
Being on the same small island with the same climate and landscape made it difficult for the two Irish polities to diverge too much on what could be offered to tourists.
The Free State’s Irish Tourist Association (ITA) wrote in 1927: “We trust that those who visit the north will also visit the south; we trust too that those who visit the south will travel to the north… there is no boundary to beauty”.
Likewise, speaking in 1930, the Northern Ireland prime minister James Craig said “Ulster was glad to pass on her tourists” to the Free State, and he was sure the Free State was equally glad to pass hers to the Six Counties.
James Craig, first prime minister of Northern Ireland
However, the promotion of tourism by the ITA and by the Ulster Tourist Development Association (UTDA) in Northern Ireland had a strong political dimension, with both voluntary bodies reliant on government support, financially and legislatively.
While the ITA emphasised the idyllic, untarnished beauty of the Irish landscape, the UTDA sought to portray the north as modern and progressive.
The ITA invited travellers to “Ireland”, whereas the UTDA invited them to “Ulster”.
The misuse of the name Ulster did not just draw criticism from nationalists but from some unionists too, with Armar Lowry-Corry, the 5th Earl Belmore of Castle Coole in Fermanagh, saying it was “disgraceful” that the UTDA “have the impudence to call” Northern Ireland “Ulster”.
He also believed the UTDA should promote tourism to Donegal, “the chief centre for tourists”, even though the county was not in Northern Ireland.
According to JT Nugent, border-based authorities such as Newry Rural Council “threatened to withdraw their subscription until the UTDA lobbied for more approved routes into the Free State”.
The biggest obstacle to cross-border tourism came about after the Free State government introduced customs barriers in April 1923 which created a hard border in Ireland.
Donegal farmers found themselves having to wait until the new border post at Galliagh opened before they could bring their produce into Derry to sell.
Overnight, the border landscape changed to one of customs and boundary posts, to approved and unapproved routes.
Afterwards, tourists travelling by train, bus or car were subjected to long delays, the filling of complicated forms and customs checks.
Initially, cars were unable to cross the border on Sundays or public holidays, until it was agreed to remove this impediment for tourists in fear of hampering the industry.
With many in Great Britain assuming they would have to undergo customs checks in visiting any part of Ireland, the UTDA and the northern government went to great lengths to highlight that Northern Ireland was part of the UK customs union and that “the trading relationships which exist between Great Britain and Ulster are exactly the same as those which exist between, say, Lancashire and Yorkshire”.
In a foreword for the 1939 UTDA ‘Ulster: For Your Holiday’ guide, James Craig reminded people from England, Scotland or Wales that “in coming amongst us you will not have left your home country” and will not have to worry “with anything in the shape of customs formalities, passports or motor regulations”.
Tourism was central to the meetings between Seán Lemass and Terence O’Neill, which commenced this month 60 years ago.
Areas of co-operation on tourism agreed to by both men included the removal of a requirement for a triptyque pass to enter either jurisdiction and consideration of permitting the free passage of hired cars through border checkpoints.
Lemass and O’Neill also agreed that the relevant ministers in both jurisdictions, Erskine Childers and Brian Faulkner, should hold joint talks in the near future.
Captain Terence O’Neill, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland (left), pictured with Taoiseach Sean Lemass and Frank Aiken, the Republic’s Minister of External Affairs, in Dublin. Captain O’Neill was paying the first visit to Dublin by a Northern Ireland Prime Minister since May 1921, shortly after partition (PA Archive/PA)
While Childers sought co-operation between both Irish governments, as well as the British government, “especially in the lucrative American market”, he met with an “uncooperative attitude” from the northern government body, the Northern Ireland Tourism Board (NITB).
According to Michael Kennedy: “It would appear that everything the NITB did in relation to the Republic contained a political dimension and so co-operation over tourism promotion remained very unlikely.”
Despite the efforts for more cross-border tourism co-operation in the mid-1960s, the onset of the Troubles later in the decade spurned such hopes.
The Troubles severely impacted on the numbers of tourists travelling to the north, as well as to the south, with optimism only re-surfacing after the IRA ceasefire of August 1994, when once again efforts were made to increase north-south tourism co-operation.
Tourism brand Ireland allowed Irish tourism “to unify behind a single market initiative”
Tourism brand Ireland allowed Irish tourism “to unify behind a single market initiative”.
While security checkpoints remained for much of the 1990s, customs barriers were removed with the onset of the EU Single Market in January 1993. It was considerably easier for tourists (and everyone else) to cross the border from thereon in.
Distrust remained, as Eric GE Zuelow has noted, with unionist proposals for joint tourism ventures with Scotland being seen by nationalists as attempts to strengthen the union, and nationalist efforts for increased cross-border co-operation being seen by unionists as a stepping stone to a united Ireland.
Highlighting its sensitivity as an issue, tourism was not included as one of the six cross-border bodies agreed to after the Good Friday Agreement.
Instead it was included as an area of co-operation, resulting in the formation of Tourism Ireland in December 2000, which, working in tandem with Bord Fáilte and Tourism NI, is responsible for marketing the island of Ireland overseas.
With most of the impediments of the past removed, cross-border co-operation and tourism to Northern Ireland has flourished, so much so that there are now “ambitious” plans to double the tourism industry in the north by 2035.
However, as the introduction of the UK government’s ETA scheme shows – another consequence of the disastrous decision of the UK to leave the EU – as long as a border exists on the island, regardless of how seamless it may appear, so too will barriers remain to true all-island tourism.
Portadown peace wall: An important mind shift towards breaking down all our barriers – The Irish News view
Work to remove peace walls in Portadown has started
By The Irish News
January 21, 2025 at 6:00am GMT
Removing a three-metre high piece of steel fencing would not normally be regarded as newsworthy, but in Water Street, Portadown, in recent days, it has become an event of welcome political significance.
The fence was one of what are normally called peace walls, seven of which were erected in the town between 1998 and 2002 to physically separate nationalists and unionists at a time of heightened sectarian tension.
The removal of the fence is only a small step in addressing the running sore of the approximately 20 remaining miles of peace walls in our society, but it represents progress.
In 1998 when the Good Friday Agreement was signed, few would have predicted that in many urban areas 27 years later, our sectarian divide would still be so entrenched that unionists and nationalists would have to be kept apart by purpose-built walls.
In 2013, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness pledged to remove all peace walls by 2023. Today, two years after their deadline, there are still up to 100 physical barriers of various types reflecting a society still deeply divided by sectarianism.
The latest draft Programme for Government from the Stormont Executive has no timetable for removing peace barriers. It looks like Stormont has given up on trying to remove them.
Robinson and McGuinness expressed the view that removing the peace barriers would improve community relations. While their aim was well meant, they might have recognised that improved community relations should come before, not after, the removal of the walls.
Although the peace barriers are an eyesore, they are not the real problem. They are merely symptoms of the sectarianism which still pervades our society. The walls will remain as long as sectarianism remains.
That was the significance of the removal of the barrier in Portadown – it was carried out with the support of the local communities. If the real barriers are in the minds of people, we can safely say that the removal of the Portadown peace fence represents a mind shift among people there. They are to be congratulated for their efforts.
In the meantime, many of our physical divides have become normalised and some have even become tourist attractions, particularly in Belfast. It is odd the Executive should promote tourism here on the basis of the peace process, while the symbols of a divided society have become tourist attractions.
As long as these walls remain, we cannot claim to enjoy genuine peace. We just have an end-of-war process, in which the Stormont Executive appears to have settled for an acceptable level of division. It must do better.
It could begin by recognizing that this week, people in Portadown took a step towards the true meaning of peace.
It also reveals an Ireland that has fortunately gone, where politicians lined up to kiss the ring of visiting prelates, and sub-contracted public morality to the Catholic Church and the country’s censorship board.
Her first novel, “The Country Girls”, with its frank portrayal of female sexuality, would swiftly join the 1,600 other books banned by the state.
The book was denounced as a “slur on Irish womanhood” and described by that beacon of Catholic values, Charlie Haughey, as “filth” that had no place in any decent home.
O’Brien had earlier run away with her older lover, Ernest Gebler, which led to a farcical and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to bring her home from her hiding place on the Isle of Man by a posse that included her father, brother and a Co Clare priest.
The pair married, but he became jealous of her literary success and his overbearing misogyny is shocking to a modern audience.
Not only did he cash the cheques she earned from her books, doling her out “housekeeping” money, he also wrote notes in her personal diary, contradicting her observations.
He also claimed to have written her early novels himself, though she seemed to manage very well at the writing once she had left him.
The notoriety of her early work – copies of which were publicly burned by the parish priest – cast her in the public eye as a glamorous libertine, a scarlet woman, revelling in the attention of the rich and famous who gathered at her parties in London.
A full ‘who’s who’, from Jackie Onassis to Robert Mitchum, dropped in and out of her life, with Marlon Brando calling by and Richard Burton puzzled that he failed to seduce her.
Her later interest in the north was unusual for a writer from the south. But her novel “House of Splendid Isolation”, which engaged with the Troubles, northern republicans and the north/south divide, was criticised for romanticising the IRA.
One critic derided her as “the Barbara Cartland of long-distance republicanism”. Another Irish writer publicly shouted across a restaurant that she was “sleeping with the Provos”.
But O’Brien understood that the conflict in the north was a matter for the whole island, and understood the north’s feeling of abandonment by her fellow countrymen.
Edna O’Brien was a novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, poet and playwright
The aggrieved gunman in the novel, loosely based on Dominic McGlinchey, laments: “The south forgot us.”
The author commented: “For many in the south, the IRA were increasingly mindless hooligans, who brought shame on their fellow Catholics and a stain on the altar of the nation.”
Her subsequent interview for The New York Times with Gerry Adams, “Ulster’s Man of the Dark”, was also criticised for being too sympathetic, because she believed he was someone who could help achieve peace.
“Some spoke to me with absolute disbelief that I would show sympathy toward such people and such a cause, while others were openly intemperate, and an MP at a gathering told me he would bring back hanging for the likes of me.”
It was at a time when sections of the Dublin media were equally intemperate in their attacks on SDLP leader John Hume because of his negotiations with Gerry Adams.
In the film, O’Brien rejects charges that she condoned republican violence, but was at pains to point out that the IRA weren’t the only ones involved in the dirty war.
Anyone who doubts this should look at the campaign by the family of GAA man Sean Brown, still fighting to get an inquiry into his murder nearly 27 years later, facing the obduracy of the British state, still intent on covering up that its agents were actively involved in the killing.
