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The pope, who is 87, had checks at the Tiber Island hospital
after his weekly general audience, the statement said, without
giving further details.
Television images showed a Vatican-registered white Fiat - a
model Francis uses regularly - leaving the hospital in the
centre of Rome.
The pontiff earlier skipped a reading at his Wednesday weekly
audience, delegating the task to an aide and telling the
faithful he was still not well.
The pope, who has had a number of health issues recently, had
cancelled appointments on Saturday and on Monday due to what the
Vatican called a mild flu.
On Sunday, he addressed crowds in St Peter's Square as normal,
to deliver his Angelus message.
"Dear brothers and sisters, I still have a bit of a cold,"
Francis said at the audience on Wednesday, announcing that
someone else would read his catechesis on envy and vainglory,
two of the seven deadly sins.
The reading was about one page long.
The pope did speak at the end of his audience, his voice
sounding hoarse and coughing a bit, to greet some of the
faithful and issue calls for peace, as is customary.
In December, the pope was forced to cancel a planned trip to a
COP28 climate meeting in Dubai because of the effects of
influenza and lung inflammation.
In January, he was unable to complete a speech owing to "a touch
of bronchitis". Later in the month he said he was doing better
despite "some aches and pains".
As a young man in his native Argentina, Francis had part of a
lung removed.
The pope also has difficulty walking, and regularly uses a
wheelchair or a cane. On Wednesday, he arrived at his indoor
audience in a wheelchair.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, Gianluca Semeraro and Cristina
Carlevaro; Writing by Keith Weir; editing by Miral Fahmy, Toby
Chopra, Gareth Jones and Alex Richardson)
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