Pope Leo leaves hospital on Saturday, four days after lung cancer surgery, and will lead the Sunday Angelus from his Vatican apartment

Four days after surgeons took the lower lobe of his right lung, the pope is going home.

The Vatican said Pope Leo was expected to leave the Gemelli Hospital in Rome on Saturday afternoon, after blood tests and a chest X ray that morning led his doctors to judge him fit for discharge. His personal physician, Dr. Luigi Carbone, and his surgeon, Professor Stefano Margaritora, gave the assessment in the Vaticans words: in view of the tests and his clinical condition, the Holy Father has been deemed fit to be discharged. Before leaving, he was to celebrate Mass at the hospital, where photographs released on Friday showed him celebrating Mass in the chapel in green vestments, standing unaided.

On Sunday he will lead the Angelus prayer from the window of the papal apartment, speaking to pilgrims in St. Peters Square. It will be his first public engagement since he entered hospital, and it settles the question the Vatican left open on Friday, when it confirmed the Angelus would happen but would not say from where.

The diagnosis behind the surgery is lung adenocarcinoma, the most common form of lung cancer. The pope is 71, was elected in May 2025, and is the first American pope. His doctors have said the operation on Tuesday was completed successfully and without complications. What they have not yet disclosed is the size of the tumour or whether the disease had spread to nearby lymph nodes, and those two facts, when the pathology results arrive, will carry most of what there is to know about his prognosis.

The Vatican is being careful with what comes next. A long trip to Latin America is scheduled from November 6 to November 17, taking in Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, where Leo served for years as a missionary and bishop. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State, told reporters on Friday that the Vatican needs to see how the pope feels once he is discharged and that he will then decide whether to keep or cancel his trips. A man four days out of lung surgery leading prayers from his own window is a strong signal of recovery. It is not yet a signal that a three country tour is on. The picture with this story is an illustration of St. Peters Square, not a photograph.