If you’ve been following the news coverage of Pope Francis’s health, you might have noticed something: there are no photos of the holy father in his hospital bed. Or, more accurately, there are no real photos: viral pictures currently circulating on Catholic social media, purporting to be of Pope Francis in a hospital bed, on a respirator, are AI-generated fakes. (As are the “videos” that show Jesus and Mary are visiting him in the hospital, but I assume you knew that!)
But you might be wondering why we’re not seeing photos of the sick pontiff. Is there some kind of coverup? Nope. The simple answer is that photos of the pope on his deathbed are actually forbidden, according to a 1996 apostolic constitution promulgated by Pope John Paul II. “No one is permitted to use any means whatsoever,” it reads, “in order to photograph or film the Supreme Pontiff either on his sickbed or after death, or to record his words for subsequent reproduction” (Universi Dominici Gregis 30).
Why, you might ask? Likely to avoid sensational exploitation of the pope’s condition. That motive may have stemmed back to 1958, when Pope Pius XII’s doctor, Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, tried to sell photos of the dying Pius XII to the papa-razzi. For such a violation of his role as the papal physician, he was forced to resign and was barred from the Vatican.
There are photos of JPII recovering in his hospital bed after he was shot by Mehmet Ali Ağca in 1981, as well as photos of his sitting in his hospital room (in papal garb, including red shoes!) near the end of his life. But to protect the tiny bit of privacy the pope has, and out of respect for the high dignity of his office, we have no photos of him (or any other pope) in a hospital gown, connected to medical machinery, or unconscious near or at the moment of death.
And it’s for this same reason that Pope Francis has been (and, hopefully, will continue to be) treated with the same dignity. It’s a reminder that Francis is not only the Roman pontiff, but also a man like us, facing all of the same weaknesses—including mortality—that we all face. And it’s in these moments that we all need the prayers of the other members of the Body of Christ. So let us pray not only for the holy father, Pope Francis, but for our ailing brother Jorge.