{"id":128997,"date":"2026-10-11T17:11:39","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T14:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/?p=128997"},"modified":"2026-10-11T17:11:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T14:11:39","slug":"pope-leo-surgery-lung-nodule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/2026\/10\/11\/pope-leo-surgery-lung-nodule\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo XIV to have surgery to remove early-stage lung nodule"},"content":{"rendered":"

(The Turkish Post) \u2013<\/strong> Pope Leo XIV said on Sunday, Oct. 11, that he will undergo surgery in the coming days to remove a nodule found on his lung, telling worshippers in St. Peter’s Square that it was detected at a very early stage.<\/p>\n

The 71-year-old pontiff made the announcement during his weekly Angelus address at the Vatican. The Vatican press office said recovery from the operation was expected to take about one week.<\/p>\n

Pope Leo lung nodule found in recent checks<\/h2>\n

Pope Leo told the crowd that the nodule had been found during recent medical checks and that it was well localized. He said doctors had advised that it would be right to intervene, and that he had decided to have the operation on their advice.<\/p>\n

He said the operation was already scheduled for the coming days. Neither the pope nor the Vatican said whether the nodule was cancerous. The press office did not give details of the type of surgery or say whether any of the pope’s public appointments would change during his recovery.<\/p>\n

A lung nodule is a small mass of dense tissue that can show up on a chest X-ray or CT scan. Most nodules are benign, but some can be cancerous, according to the American Lung Association.<\/p>\n

From Chicago to the Vatican<\/h2>\n

Leo, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago on Sept. 14, 1955, was elected on May 8, 2025, as the first pope from the United States. He leads a church of about 1.4 billion Catholics.<\/p>\n

Before his election, he spent many years as a missionary in Peru, where he later served as bishop of Chiclayo and became a Peruvian citizen. He is a member of the Order of Saint Augustine and led the order worldwide for 12 years. Pope Francis appointed him head of the Vatican office that oversees the selection of bishops in 2023 and made him a cardinal the same year.<\/p>\n

Shortly after his election, Leo told cardinals that he chose his papal name in part because Pope Leo XIII had addressed the social questions raised by the industrial revolution, and that the church now faced a new revolution in artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Health of the popes under scrutiny<\/h2>\n

Leo succeeded Pope Francis, who died on April 21, 2025, at the age of 88. Francis spent 38 days in Rome’s Gemelli hospital in February and March 2025 with double pneumonia, his longest hospital stay as pope, and died less than a month after he was discharged.<\/p>\n

Francis also had colon surgery at the Gemelli hospital in July 2021 and an operation for a hernia in June 2023. Pope John Paul II was treated at the same hospital several times, including after he was shot in St. Peter’s Square in 1981. Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, resigned in 2013, saying he no longer had the strength to carry out the ministry. He was the first pope to step down in nearly 600 years.<\/p>\n

Leo’s ties to T\u00fcrkiye<\/h2>\n

Pope Leo chose T\u00fcrkiye for his first foreign trip as pope. He visited the country from Nov. 27 to Nov. 30, 2025, meeting President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan in Ankara and visiting Istanbul.<\/p>\n

During the trip, he traveled to Iznik, the ancient Nicaea, to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council of the Christian church, held in 325. He marked the anniversary with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, who is based in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

In Istanbul, Leo visited the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque, before continuing to Lebanon on the second leg of the trip.<\/p>\n

The Vatican press office has not announced the exact date of the surgery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(The Turkish Post) \u2013 Pope Leo XIV said on Sunday, Oct. 11, that he will undergo surgery in the coming days to remove a nodule found on his lung, telling worshippers in St. Peter’s Square that it was detected at a very early stage. The 71-year-old pontiff made the announcement during his weekly Angelus address […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":128998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","jnews_video_option_group":[[]],"override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"custom","post_date_format_custom":"d\/m\/Y H:m","show_post_reading_time":"1","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"1","zoom_button_out_step":"4","zoom_button_in_step":"4","show_post_tag":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"2","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-715","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_bookmark_settings":{"override_bookmark_button":"0","override_show_bookmark_button":"0"},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[163,164,166,165,161,162],"class_list":["post-128997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-catholic-church","tag-health","tag-iznik","tag-pope-francis","tag-pope-leo-xiv","tag-vatican"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128999,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128997\/revisions\/128999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishpost.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}