Pope Leo XIV to Undergo Lung Surgery Following Nodule Detection

The takes

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  Adam Smith

  1723–1790, Scotland (the Scottish Enlightenment: Kirkcaldy, Glasgow, Edinburgh)

  Why a Pope Has a Duty to Go Under the Knife

  A pontiff who consents to prudent surgery is not clinging to power, but performing an office of stewardship owed to those who depend upon him.

  The world is informed that Pope Leo XIV, seventy‑one years of age, is to undergo surgery for a nodule discovered in his lung, with his physicians estimating about a week of recovery and his next great journey already planned to distant American nations. The fact, in itself, is simple; yet the spectacle of a single, frail body on which so many eyes are fixed is not simple at all. Here is a man whose declared mission is to preach peace, to call rulers to mercy, and to defend the dignity of the person; and yet he must first attend to that most undignified of concerns, his own chest and its mysterious blemish.

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  John Locke

  1632–1704, England (writing amid the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution)

  A Pope in Surgery, Not in State

  When a pontiff consents to an operation to preserve his life and health, he acts as a man under natural law, not as a prince demanding political obedience — and we do well to keep that distinction clear.

  We are told that Pope Leo XIV, seventy-one years of age and the present Bishop of Rome, has a nodule in his lung, found in the course of a medical examination, and that he has agreed with his physicians to undergo surgery in the coming days, with an expected recovery of about a week. This is reported as a first major concern touching his health, and therefore is made the object of much public notice. Yet, as I read these accounts, I cannot but observe that nothing in them concerns power, laws, or penalties. They concern a body in need of care, and a man exercising choice about his own preservation.

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  Niccolò Machiavelli

  1469–1527, Florence (republican secretary and diplomat, then exile, amid the Italian Wars)

  A Pope on the Operating Table Knows He Is Also Operating on His Power

  By submitting his lung to the knife in public view, the Pope protects not only his life but the authority of the state he embodies, turning a stroke of fortune into an occasion for virtù.

  The drama is not the nodule in the lung. The drama is that the Bishop of Rome, at seventy‑one, tells the world he will let others cut into him. Pope Leo XIV announces that a lump has been found during a medical check‑up, that he will undergo surgery in the first days of the week, and that his doctors expect only a brief recovery. It is his first major health concern. Meanwhile his next great procession, a November journey to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, remains on the calendar. Where the vulgar see a medical bulletin, I see a prince deciding how his body and his office will age in public.

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