Vatican denies report that Pope Francis has brain tumor
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Wednesday denied a report in an Italian newspaper that Pope Francis has a small, curable brain tumor, saying he is in good health and that his head is “absolutely perfect.”
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the report in the National Daily was “completely unfounded and seriously irresponsible and not worthy of attention.” The Vatican’s newspaper suggested the timing of the publication smacked of an attempt to manipulate the outcome of a meeting on family matters at the Vatican.
Citing unnamed nursing sources, the National Daily said the 78-year-old pope had traveled by helicopter to the San Rossore di Barbaricina clinic near Pisa in recent months to see a Japanese brain cancer specialist, Dr. Takanori Fukushima. The newspaper said the doctor determined that the small dark spot on Francis’ brain could be treated without surgery.
In subsequent versions, the paper said Fukushima had instead gone to the Vatican to see the pope in a Vatican helicopter. The ANSA news agency, citing unnamed sources in Pisa, said the trip was in January and that Fukushima had traveled by helicopter to the Vatican to diagnose the pope.
Lombardi dismissed the reports Wednesday, issuing three separate denials as the day wore on and after consulting with the pope.
Lombardi said that no Japanese doctor had visited the pope, that Francis had not traveled to Pisa, that no helicopters had landed in the Vatican from the outside and that no tests as described in the newspaper had been performed on the pontiff.
“I can confirm that the pope is in good health,” Lombardi said. “If you were in the piazza this morning, you would have seen that as well. And if you go on the trips with him, you know he has a small problem with his legs, but his head is absolutely perfect.”
The newspaper’s editor, Andrea Cangini, said he stood by the story. In an interview, he said the newspaper worked for months to cross-check the information with various sources from different places and that there was “not the minimum doubt” that it was true.
Without going into details about Francis’ medical chart, Cangini said the tumor is small, can be treated pharmacologically and is in an area of the brain that isn’t difficult to work around. “The diffuse opinion among the doctors who are treating this case is that surgery is unnecessary and that the problem is under control,” he said.
Fukushima is a professor of neurosurgery at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. He has, in the past, been to the Vatican and met with the pope.
On his Japanese-language blog, Fukushima has an entry from September 2014, complete with photos of him meeting the pope in St. Peter’s Square. He wrote that his father had served as a priest at the Meiji Shrine and was a senior priest at the Association of Shinto Shrines and that Fukushima was “overwhelmed” to meet with Francis.
In a blog post from January-February of this year, Fukushima wrote that he went back to the Vatican on Jan. 28, via helicopter, and met with several cardinals including Cardinal Angelo Comastri, the archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica. Both visits were arranged on the sidelines of surgical duties Fukushima was performing in Rome and elsewhere, he wrote.
A woman at the front desk of Fukushima’s clinic in Raleigh, N.C., said she was told not to comment. No one answered the door Wednesday at a listing for Fukushima in the northern part of Raleigh. The Pisa hospital’s director didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment.
Cangini said the paper had deliberated a long time before publishing the news, which it said it had confirmed months ago. But he said he had determined that Francis was a public figure and that the pope’s public persona outweighed his right to privacy.