From experience, I know what COVID-19 patients are going through, says pope

Pope Francis says he can relate with the pain COVID-19 patients undergo, given his experience from a respiratory disease he suffered from decades ago.

The pope is said to have had his lung removed when he was 21 as a result of a pulmonary infection.

Francis’ experience is contained in a book titled “Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future”, which he co-authored with Austen Ivereigh, and slated for release on December 1.

According to excerpts of the book published on Monday by La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper, the pope was quoted as saying he didn’t know if he was going live or die when he was hospitalised in Argentina in 1957, after he came down with a lung infection.

“For months, I did not know who I was, if I was going to live or die. Not even doctors knew whether I would make it,” the pope said.

“One day, I asked my mother, hugging her, to tell me if I was going to die.

“I know from experience how coronavirus patients attached to a ventilator are feeling while fighting to breathe.”

He also recalled another situation in which he felt isolated and lonely, like a patient under quarantine.

The period, he said, was in 1986, while in a Jesuit theology school in Frankfurt, Germany, where he was conducting research for a doctorate.

“I felt like a fish out of water,” the 83-year-old pope was quoted to have said.

Francis noted that during that period, he had no one to celebrate the world cup won by Argentina in 1986, adding that it made him feel more homesick.