In his own words: Pope Francis has long been up front about his health problems and eventual death
Associated PressROME — Pope Francis has written and spoken at length about sickness, aging and death, and personally directed that his doctors provide the fairly detailed daily updates that have punctuated his own battle with pneumonia. On growing old: Francis has long complained about the way society treats old people, saying they are part of today’s consumerist “throwaway culture” when they are deemed no longer productive. On death in general: In the same book, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio recalled that his grandmother Rosa, who helped raise him, had the words of an adage framed on her bedside table that stayed with him all his life: “See that God sees you, see that he is watching you, see that you will die and you don’t know when.” He referred to the saying again in 2018 in a speech to priests, and that his grandmother had instructed him to recite it every day “‘so you will remember that life has an end.’” “I didn’t understand much at the time, but that verse, since I was three years old, has stuck with me,” he told the priests. The thing was kind of bleak, but it helped me.” On his own health problems: The Argentine journalist and physician, Dr. Nelson Castro, revealed in his 2021 book “The Health of Popes,” that Francis had reached out to him within a few months of his 2013 election with a suggestion that he write a book about the history of the health of the popes, including his own. He told Castro later that he thought about death — a lot — but that it didn’t scare him “one bit.” Francis made plans, too: He decided his tomb will be in St. Mary Major basilica, not in the Vatican, so he can be near his favorite icon of the Madonna, the Salus Populi Romani, which is located there.
History of this topic
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