Easter celebrations, the most solemn of the liturgical year, have been rewritten. The pope – admitted to Gemelli, with a progressively improving clinical picture, but certainly incompatible with the enormous effort that would await him – will not be there. He will be replaced by a cardinal for each major rite of Holy Week. The vice dean of the College of Cardinals, the Argentine Leonardo Sandri, will begin for Palm Sunday, who confirmed that he had already been alerted on Monday, which suggests that Bergoglio’s conditions were perhaps already considered a bit precarious. Then it will be the turn of the Vicar of Rome, Angelo De Donatis for Holy Thursday in the morning, the archpriest of St. Peter’s basilica, the Franciscan Mauro Gambetti, for the mass in Coena domini and the washing of the feet, and the finale of the triduum Easter, and finally on Easter Sunday, the Dean of the College, Cardinal Giovan Battista Re.
The release date from the Gemelli hospital is uncertain
In short, the message is clear: it is not known when the Pope will leave the apartment on the tenth floor (where he was hospitalized in 2021 for colon surgery), initially he was told he would be hospitalized for two days. It would not be the first time that a cardinal celebrates and the Pope presides. It also happened at last year’s Easter Vigil, recalls Ansa. Cardinal Re from the altar and the Pope seated to one side, restricted in movement by gonarthrosis of his right knee. But no one at the moment can say whether Francesco will be discharged from the polyclinic on Sunday, it all depends on the course of the infection. Thus an unprecedented scenario is envisaged for the Church if the Pontiff is absent from one of his main appointments.
The washing of the feet was foreseen at Regina Coeli
Medical experts observe that respiratory failure is not uncommon in the elderly, especially for those with intense social and communicative activity. It is the rule in internal medicine and geriatrics departments. But for the Pope, the effort is also related to mobility, given that for over a year he has spent a large part of his time in a wheelchair, refusing to have surgery to avoid (so it has been said over time) anesthesia, which in 2021 had long aftermath. Easter is by far the most important Catholic religious holiday, and Bergoglio particularly cares about the mass in Coena domini on Holy Thursday with the rite of foot washing which, the first Pope to do such a thing, always wanted to celebrate outside of the Vatican, in highly symbolic places such as juvenile prisons or centers for migrants. Only in the period of the pandemic did he have to refrain from holding the ritual outside the Leonine walls. This year, according to rumors, the washing of the feet should have been held in the Roman prison of Regina Coeli, with the inmates.