The Pope has confessed in a private telephone conversation that when he was admitted for bronchitis of infectious origin at the Gemelli hospital in Rome before Holy Week, he arrived by ambulance "unconscious" and that if "a few more hours" had passed, "he would not have been able to tell it".
"He explained to me that he arrived unconscious at the hospital. And that a few more hours would have been enough, and he didn't know if he could tell," revealed the Italian Michele Ferri, Andrea's brother, a merchant shot to death in the city of Pesaro on June 3. 2013 after a robbery perpetrated by one of his own employees.
Since the murder occurred 10 years ago, the Pope has shown his closeness to the Ferri family and has never interrupted his usual late-night phone calls, even welcoming them in a private audience at the Vatican.
"I had lost consciousness. I had a very bad time," Ferri says the Pope told him, according to the Italian newspaper 'Il resto del Carlino'.
However, Ferri has assured that the Pope's voice "was fit, it was sonorous and serene." "I heard him better than when he called me in January and it seemed to me that he was more tired," Ferri said.
When he was released, after four days in the hospital where he underwent all kinds of tests and health checks, the Pope joked with journalists: "I'm still alive."
The Vatican press office has downplayed this medical episode. In the first statement it was even reported that the Pontiff was at the Gemelli Hospital for previously scheduled routine checks.
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