Pope's health should not be taken 'for granted', says top Vatican diplomat
I keep thinking about the phrase "no sign." We like to imagine that our bodies send us warnings, that a cough or a pain arrives before the real trouble. But sometimes the first sign is the event itself, and the Pope’s case is just a very public example of a private truth that applies to all of us.
Gallagher’s comment about not taking the Pope’s health for granted is honest, and I think it cuts deeper than the usual diplomatic caution. It acknowledges that the Vatican, for all its ancient structures, is really a place held together by one person’s biology. That’s a strange thought when you consider how much of the world’s attention is fixed on the institution.
I’d want to know what the operation was for, of course, and what recovery looks like. But the bigger mystery is how any of us plans for the future when the body refuses to give us a heads-up. The Pope is 87, and the cardinals are already thinking about the next conclave. Yet I suspect even they don’t know how much time they have to work with. That uncertainty is the weirdest part of being alive.