On Wednesday, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi dismissed a report in the Italian newspaper Quotidiano Nazionale that Pope Francis has a small, curable tumor in his brain, calling it "absolutely baseless" and "a complete lie." In a statement, Lombardi said that "as everyone can see, the pope is always carrying out his intense activity without interruption, in an absolutely normal way." He also chided the newspaper for its anonymously sourced article, saying "publishing such a report is a seriously irresponsible act."
The editor of Quotidiano Nazionale, Andrea Cangini stood by the story, which alleges that Francis, 78, traveled to the San Rossore di Barbaricina clinic near Pisa months ago to consult Dr. Takanori Fukushima, a Japanese specialist who said the tumor could be cured without surgery. "We have had this for months, we took months to find all the confirmation necessary," Cangini told Bloomberg News. "We asked ourselves for a long time if it was opportune to publish, then we decided that informing the public was more important than the pope's privacy, given his public role."
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