Pope diagnosed with lung cancer but had successful surgery, Vatican says

Despite all the reassurances, the news has shaken Catholics all over the world.

“Am I worried? Yes, because I certainly wasn’t expecting anything like this,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin told journalists on Tuesday.

He agreed that the news was like a “bolt from the blue”, but said the cardinals had been struck by the Pope’s “serenity” and were confident in his recovery.

Outside Gemelli Hospital, which has treated several popes and is home to a large statue of John Paul II, a few Catholics lingered after the pontiff was admitted.

Carla had come specially, wanting to be close.

“He seems calm, so we are calm too – even though illness is always unpleasant,” she told the BBC. “We will wait here and pray.”

“I was in St Peter’s Square when he made the announcement, and I felt really awful,” said Elsa, who was also present. “I was really taken aback,” she said, explaining that when Pope Leo was elected she had thought he was a younger, healthier pontiff.

“It turns out he’s vulnerable too,” she added.

Elise Ann Allen, who wrote a biography of the Pope, told the BBC it would be “premature to be alarmed, but it’s also premature to say everything’s fine”.

She urged against complacency, telling the World Service’s Newsday programme: “We really have to wait and see what the doctors say in the coming days”.

Allen added: “We don’t know how much of a crisis it is at this point, but it’s certainly a scare.” She suggested that the world would see “a more determined Pope after this”.

In the wake of the announcement of Pope Leo’s diagnosis, it emerged that his brother, Louis Prevost, was also being treated for cancer of a different kind.

Prevost was being treated in the US for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, his wife told the BBC’s partner CBS News. His wife did not say what stage Prevost’s cancer had reached.