I. Breitbart, following the AP report, says that Leo XIV, the Roman Pontiff, seventy-one years old, lost the lower lobe of his right lung to the knife on Tuesday at the Gemelli hospital; the surgery confirmed a malignant tumour, which the doctors call adenocarcinoma. Yesterday, sooner than had been expected, he went back to the Vatican. Today, from a window of the Apostolic Palace, he greeted many thousands of the faithful in St Peter's Square, thanked the doctors and the staff, and said he would return to his usual duties gradually. NPR and the Washington Examiner report this too, briefly.

II. The surgeon who operated on him, Stefano Margaritora, told Vatican News that he expects him to recover fully in about ten days, and that there are no clinical reasons against his November journey to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru: a dozen flights, two helicopter rides to high places. But the examination of the tumour and the lymph nodes is still under way; on it depends whether further treatment, chemotherapy for instance, is needed. All this rests on a single source. What follows, no one knows yet, not even he.

III. What was cut out? Part of the bellows by which the body draws in air and gives it back; flesh, blood, tissue. A thing on loan, which nature was going to reclaim one day, and has now reclaimed a little early, by the knife. The ruling part, which judges and assents, no blade has touched. Think of this whenever your own body fails: you are losing what was never yours.

IV. On the fourth day after the knife he came back to the window and did his work: he blessed the people, gave thanks, said he now felt closer to the sick. This is standing at one's post. A soldier does not dismiss himself; he waits until the one who posted him calls him back. Socrates stood his ground at Potidaea, and later in prison, with the same mind. But mark what he said: gradually. Keeping your post does not mean running. Nature sets the measure; whoever exceeds it is not braver, only more impatient.

V. The crowd cheered; the delegation from Africa danced; an old factory worker from Puglia called it a miracle; women who had come from across the Ocean were glad to be praying with him, no longer for him. Do not despise this. Τὸ τῷ σμήνει μὴ συμφέρον οὐδὲ τῇ μελίσσῃ συμφέρει: what is not good for the hive is not good for the bee. Their joy is the joy of the hive. But the man at the window must remember that applause is not the work, and that those who applaud will soon die, and then those who remember them.

VI. Your father Antoninus, as he was dying, gave the tribune the watchword Equanimity, then turned over as if to sleep. He made no speech, summoned no crowd. He kept to his duty to the end, and did not fear the end. Keep this example always before your eyes: not so that you seek death, but so that when it comes, it finds you among your duties.

VII. You too, in camp on the Danube, were weak in chest and stomach; in the mornings you would rather lie under the blankets than rise to the work of a man. Were you born for a warm bed? Think how many mornings you rose unwillingly, and how little you got done. He, missing part of a lung, came to the window. You, whole, what is your excuse?

VIII. Providence or atoms: either the tests will bring good news or bad; either the journey will happen or it will be put off. Neither is in your power, nor in his. What is in your power is to act rightly today, to be grateful to the doctors, to feel with the sick, not to desert your office and not to snatch beyond your strength. The body gives way; the post remains, until the one who posted you calls you back.