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 Italian newspapers published excerpts of the new book "Let Us Dream:
The Path to A Better Future," on Monday ahead of publication next
month.
In the book, a conversation with one of his biographers, Briton
Austen Ivereigh, Francis talks in some of the most personal terms to
date about the time he was hovering between life and death.
"I know from experience the feeling of those who are sick with
coronavirus, struggling to breathe as they are attached to a
ventilator," he said.
Francis was a 21-year-old seminarian in the second year of his
studies for the priesthood in his native Buenos Aires when an
illness that had been mis-diagnosed as influenza worsened and he was
hospitalised.
"They took about a litre and a half of water out of one lung and I
was hanging between life and death," he said.
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Several months later doctors removed the upper lobe of his right lung. Today,
the 83-year-old pope can be heard breathing heavily after climbing stairs.
"(The experience) changed my bearings," he said. "For months I didn't know who I
was, if I would live or die, even the doctors didn't know. I remember hugging my
mother one day and asking her if I was about to die."
Francis recounts how a nun who worked as nurse helped save his life by secretly
doubling the doses of penicillin and streptomycin that a doctor had prescribed.
"Thanks to her regular contact with sick people, she knew what patients needed
better than the doctor and had the courage to put that experience to work," he
said.
(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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