Francis’ stays at Gemelli hospital compared to John Paul II’s

As of March 12, 2025, Pope Francis has been hospitalized for 27 days at the Gemelli Hospital to treat a serious respiratory infection. Apart from the Argentine pope, John Paul II is the only other pontiff to have been treated at the Roman hospital.

I.MEDIA takes a look back at the hospitalization history of these two popes.

Pope Francis has been admitted to Gemelli four times since the beginning of his pontificate in 2013. Two stays were for digestive system-related conditions (in July 2021 and June 2023), and the other two for respiratory problems (March-April 2023 and the current hospitalization).

Pope John Paul II, for his part, made at least eight visits to Gemelli, a hospital he humorously nicknamed “Vatican 3” — Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the popes, being number 2.

He also went there for a few hours for a radio interview in 1993. The journalist and doctor Raul Castro also reports in his book The Health of the Popes that the Polish pontiff was hospitalized for laryngotracheitis in 1997, without further details.

The first hospitalization of a pope at Gemelli occurred under tragic circumstances: on May 13, 1981, John Paul II was shot several times at close range by the Turkish assassin Mehmet Ali Ağca while circulating through St. Peter's Square. He was immediately transferred to Gemelli.

Losing consciousness before arriving at the hospital, the Pope underwent surgery for six hours. The doctors removed more than 21 inches of the pontiff's large intestine. The Polish pontiff narrowly escaped death and would be scarred for life — both physically and mentally — by this episode.

Due to probable contamination during a blood transfusion, John Paul II made a second stay at Gemelli just a few weeks after the first hospitalization. To recover, the Pope then spent 56 days in the hospital — the record to date — and then several weeks at Castel Gandolfo.

The Pope then had a benign tumor removed from his colon during a pre-scheduled operation in 1992. He also had to undergo surgery twice after accidental falls in 1993 and 1994. In 1996, he returned to Gemelli for appendicitis that he had delayed treating.

His last two hospitalizations occurred in 2005. He was admitted on February 1 for breathing difficulties due to laryngospasm and acute laryngotracheitis caused by flu-like symptoms. He was discharged after 10 days, but had to return two weeks later due to a relapse of the flu, which caused further breathing difficulties. The doctors performed a tracheotomy on the Pope. He was discharged from the hospital on March 13, and died in the Vatican 20 days later, on April 2.

In total, John Paul II spent 159 days, or more than 5 months, at Gemelli Hospital. Benedict XVI, for his part, was never admitted to the hospital for medical reasons. The German pontiff, who astonished the world in 2013 when he decided to renounce the Throne of Peter, did, however, visit Gemelli. He went in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of its medical school, and in 2014 to visit his brother Georg Ratzinger, who was hospitalized there.