It was with great sadness that we learned that Pope Leo XIV was diagnosed with lung cancer yesterday.
Prognosis
We all hope for the best, but we must guard against wishful thinking. That being said, there is some early news that provides hope.
So the pope was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma. That’s the most common type of lung cancer. It produces some substances in the lung like mucus, for example. This cancer can be seen in both smokers and nonsmokers. I’m somewhat optimistic about this because they did say that it was localized. It was a localized form of lung cancer.
And that means presumably it hasn’t spread to other parts of the body. We don’t know that definitively, but presumably that’s what that means. And also the size of this lesion, we know, before it was removed, it was a nodule. By definition, a nodule is three centimeters of size or less.
A mass would be greater than three centimeters. So those are all positive features of this lung cancer.
[…] So all that information really needs to be seen and understood before we can really understand the prognosis of the tumor. And that will be given once the pathology report is seen.
PROGNOSIS Doctors say prognosis depends heavily on the stage of the cancer and whether it has spread beyond the lung.
The Vatican has not disclosed the size of the tumour or whether lymph nodes were affected, making it impossible to assess Leo’s individual prognosis at this stage.
According to the American Cancer Society, the five-year relative survival rate for non-small cell lung cancer is 67% when the disease remains confined to the lung. The rate falls to about 40% when the disease has spread to nearby tissues or lymph nodes and to about 12% when it has spread to distant organs.
However, it says people being diagnosed now may have a better outlook than these statistics suggest because of improving treatments. Medical experts also caution that outcomes vary widely depending on tumour size, lymph node involvement, a patient’s age and overall health.
WHO GETS IT? Smoking remains the main risk factor. However, adenocarcinoma is also the most common type of lung cancer among people who have never smoked. The pope is not known to have been a smoker.
According to Dr. Leonard Wudel, a Louisiana Thoracic and Cardiac Surgery physcian, survival rates for lung cancer are very good when caught early.
“When we can diagnose a patient with stage one, that is when we can have the biggest impact. He had exactly what he needed, which was surgical removal,” Wudel said. “The cure rate is between 73 and 93 percent, and that depends on the type of cancer, how aggressive it is, and the overall health of the patient.”
Wudel said the type of cancer the Pope has is relatively common, and that non-small-cell lung cancer has a good prognosis.
One of the many things WLBOTT admires about Pope Leo (Robert Francis Prevost) is his moral leadership against the vile criminality of America’s current regime. The Pope is tuned in, and he sees what any intelligent, thoughtful person sees.
Pope Leo Praises Europe’s Democracy, Diverging Once Again From Trump Speaking in France, the pontiff lauded postwar efforts to unify the continent. Experts saw it as a critique of President Trump’s repeated berating of European leaders. […] Leo did not name any particular leader or political party, but analysts read some of his more pointed remarks as critiques of the Trump administration, which — by assailing NATO, the European Union and European allies like Denmark — has scrambled the order that has governed European alliances since World War II.
Leo said that Europe, with its Christian heritage and history of cooperation, could push back against those who dismiss “the value of keeping one’s word” and those who “boast of lies and deceit.”
The pope’s comments represented “as much as a direct response to Trump that you can get today,” said Massimo Faggioli, a Catholic theologian at Villanova University, Pope Leo’s alma mater.
On the social media platform X, Prevost’s former account reposted posts critical of US immigration policies under President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The pope has supported various gun control measures.
In 2025, Leo denounced what he called a “pandemic of arms” after the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting. His X account which he used prior to his election as pope has since been deleted and he is currently using the official @Pontifex handle, inherited from Popes Benedict XVI and Francis.
In April 2026, amidst the 2026 Iran war, Leo said that Donald Trump’s threats against Iranian civilization and infrastructure were “truly unacceptable” and encouraged people to contact political leaders and members of Congress to “tell them to work for peace and to reject war.” Trump subsequently directly criticized him in a Truth Social post, writing that “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy”. He also referred to the pope as “too liberal.” Leo responded, stating that “I have no fear of the Trump administration,” and cited being a peacekeeper as a message of the Gospel.
Prayers for Pope Leo XIV poured into Rome on Sunday and Monday from heads of state and church leaders around the world, after the 71-year-old pope told St. Peter’s Square that doctors had found a small nodule in his lung and that he would have it removed.
Two names are missing from that list. As of Monday morning, neither President Donald Trump nor Vice President JD Vance had said a public word about the pope’s surgery. […]
Leo has the prayers of the American people. Worshipers at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral prayed for him at Sunday Mass. Archbishop Ronald Hicks of New York, finishing a week on the Camino de Santiago, asked Jesus, the Divine Physician, to guide the hands of the pope’s surgeons.
There are many things to admire about Pope Leo. He really gets America. He walks the walk – he was a missionary in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s. He’s a strong advocate for social justice. He is aware of climate change and the urgent need to address it. And he loves sports.
At 7:20am Tuesday, we asked Elder G to gather the most current info on Pope Leo‘s condition and prognosis.
The news is serious, but the information available this morning contains some genuinely encouraging signs.
Pope Leo XIV, 71, has been diagnosed with lung adenocarcinoma, the most common form of lung cancer. On Tuesday, October 13, surgeons at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital removed the lower lobe of his right lung. The Vatican says the operation was successful, there were no complications, and he woke normally afterward. He reportedly spent a peaceful night in the hospital.
The most important point concerning prognosis is that the tumor appears to have been found relatively early and was described beforehand as small and well-localized. Surgery to remove an entire lobe, a lobectomy, is standard potentially curative treatment when non-small-cell lung cancer is confined to the lung.
There is, however, one big unanswered question: the stage is not yet known publicly. Doctors still need the final pathology, particularly whether cancer cells are present in nearby lymph nodes. That determines whether surgery may have been sufficient or whether chemotherapy, immunotherapy, targeted treatment, or some combination would be recommended afterward.
For some context, Reuters cites a roughly 67% five-year survival rate when lung cancer remains confined to the lung. That statistic covers a broad population and should not be read as Leo’s individual odds. If his cancer proves to be a small Stage I tumor with clear lymph nodes and clean surgical margins, his outlook could be considerably better than the grim picture people often associate with the words “lung cancer.”
A few things currently tilt the scales toward optimism: the nodule was discovered during a checkup rather than after severe symptoms appeared; it was apparently localized enough to remove surgically; Leo has been physically active and generally in good health; and there were no surgical complications. The Vatican expects him to remain hospitalized for roughly a week, and his public engagements are canceled through October 20.
So at this point I would characterize the situation as serious, but cautiously hopeful, rather than dire. The next really consequential information will be the final pathology report: tumor size, lymph-node status, surgical margins, and molecular characteristics.
Given the WLBOTT community’s affection for Leo, I think there is reasonable room this morning for both worry and hope. This is not merely doctors saying, “we’ll see.” So far, several of the things you would most want to hear after a lung-cancer diagnosis have gone his way.
The WLBOTT community wishes a good outcome for Pope Leo so that he may continue his brave and important work in a world so torn and tattered.
This diagnosis comes at in interesting time in the WLBOTT world. Several members have been reading and discussing Pope Leo‘s encyclical on Artificial Intelligence.
Don’t be intimidated by the term “encyclical.” It is an 82 page document, well organized and builds an argument step by step, and although dense and thought-provoking, it is very readable.
We hope to have much more to say about the encyclical in future blotts.
The English pdf version of the encyclical is available for free from many sites, including Eternal Word.
