A Vatican medical bulletin said the operation lasted about 90 minutes and went well, with no complications. The pope woke normally and, after a short period of observation, was returned to his room on the hospital's 10th floor.
Oncologists had said before the surgery that the outlook would be excellent if the growth proved cancerous, because it was removed at an early stage. The Vatican has canceled all of the pope's public events through Oct. 20. It has not announced whether any further treatment will follow.
The pope was born Robert Prevost in Chicago and is the first American to hold the office. The news reached Washington and Rome on the same day, and it drew attention far beyond the faithful who follow him.
The word nobody wants to hear
I have never met the man, and I do not need to. I know what it is to sit across a desk from a physician who says a word you did not want. The room goes quiet. The clock on the wall gets loud. A man who was reading a chart a minute ago is suddenly looking at his own hands.
That moment comes to the powerful and to the plain alike. A pope in white and a night-shift worker in a hospital gown hear the same word in the same hush. Cancer does not check a title at the door. It does not care about a bank balance or a ballot or a crowd in a square.
That is not a cruel thing to say. It is an honest one. Scripture says it first and plainest.
"For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away." (1 Peter 1:24)
Our age works hard to hide that verse. We build monuments to youth. We tuck the sick behind curtains and the dying behind closed doors. We talk about "wellness" as though a man could purchase his way out of the dust he came from. Then a bulletin comes out of a Rome hospital, and the whole illusion fits on a single page.
Good surgeons and a good God
Let me be plain about something. Thank God for surgeons. Thank God for the skill that finds a growth early and takes it out cleanly. Medicine is a mercy, and a Christian receives it with gratitude. When doctors say the outlook is good, rejoice, and rejoice without apology.
But a good report from the surgeon is not the same as a settled peace in the soul. A man can leave the operating room cancer-free and still not be ready to leave the world. The doctor can promise you years. He cannot promise you tomorrow. Only One holds that.
My friend, every one of us is living on borrowed breath. The healthy man at the construction site and the patient on the tenth floor stand at the same distance from eternity, which is one heartbeat. The only difference is that the patient has been reminded. You and I get the reminder free of charge today.
What stands when everything else shakes
So what holds? Not strength. Not office. Not a clean scan. What holds is a Savior who walked out of a borrowed tomb on the third day and said that death no longer owns the last word.
"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." (John 11:25)
Notice what He does not say. He does not say, "I will give you a doctrine about the resurrection." He says, "I am" the resurrection. A Person. You do not hold a Person at arm's length and call it religion. You come to Him, empty-handed, and you trust Him with the one thing you cannot keep safe yourself.
That is the gospel at its simplest. Sin put every one of us under a sentence. Christ took the sentence on the cross, paid it in full, and rose to prove the payment was accepted. Nothing you have done is too heavy for that payment. Nothing you have achieved adds a penny to it.
A diagnosis, whether it lands on a pope or a plumber, is a loud knock on the door of the heart. Some men answer by hardening. Others answer by finally asking the question they put off for forty years: if this were my last month, am I ready to meet God?
Ask it now, while you can ask it quietly, in good light, with time to hear the answer. The Lord who stood at the grave of Lazarus is not far from any sickroom, and He has never turned away a sinner who came to Him in earnest.