Why is Pope Leo being hospitalized?

Pope Leo will go into hospital on Tuesday before surgery to remove ‌a small growth found on one of his lungs, the Vatican said, as the pontiff kept up a busy schedule on Monday, holding seven previously planned meetings in the morning.

Leo, 71, said on Sunday that the growth, a small nodule, had been found on a recent check-up, was "well-contained" and had been spotted early.

The nodule was found during a routine health check, the Vatican press office told journalists earlier on Monday, before confirming that the pope is expected to be hospitalised late on Tuesday morning, ahead of his surgery.

It did not say when the actual operation would take place.

A ⁠regular advisory on the pope's daily schedule, issued at noon (1000 GMT) on Monday, said he met that morning with visiting bishops from Argentina, Nicaragua and the United States, among others.

In a meeting at the Vatican with members of a Rome-based charity group on Monday, the pope spoke in a strong, clear voice, thanking them for their work.

Leo, elected pope by the world's cardinals in May 2025, is relatively young for a Church leader. He enjoys sports, including tennis, and is not known to be a smoker or to have had health issues previously.

The Vatican has said the pope's recovery is expected to take about a week.

A nodule on the lung is a small, localised lesion that can be benign. The American Thoracic Society says fewer than 5% of lung nodules overall prove cancerous, although risk rises with age, size, and other factors such as smoking.

Dr. Federico Venuto, chief ‌of thoracic ⁠surgery at Rome's Policlinico Umberto I hospital, said surgeries to remove lung nodules are usually minimally invasive, and can sometimes involve use of a thin camera tube called a thoracoscope.

"The complication rate is extremely low," he told Reuters.

Leo's decision to discuss his upcoming surgery publicly on Sunday marked a contrast with his predecessor, the late Pope Francis, who died in April 2025 at age 88.

Francis was hospitalised ​several times as he grew frail ​in his later years and did ⁠not usually announce his hospital visits in advance, sometimes sparking a media frenzy over his health.

Canadian Cardinal Gérald Lacroix said on Monday that he was grateful for Leo's transparency.

"I really appreciated yesterday ... (that) he himself said, 'This ​is what's going on,' very transparent, and asked for prayers," said Lacroix. "I like that."

Leo, the leader of ​the 1.4-billion-member Church, ⁠had several public appointments on his calendar for this week, including a Mass in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday morning.

The Vatican has not said if the Mass, the closing event of a week-long assembly of bishops, will still be held. While the pope is going to hospital on Tuesday, it could ⁠still be ​led by a Vatican cardinal.

According to Reuters news agency, the pope is the final earthly authority for the world's ​Catholics and does not have a deputy who steps in when he is sick. 

When a pope is incapacitated, the business of the Vatican's vast bureaucracy carries on as usual, ​holding off on any decisions that require papal approval.