At noon on Sunday, Pope Leo XIV stood at the window of the Apostolic Palace for the weekly prayer and told the crowd in St. Peter’s Square that doctors had found a nodule in his lung, caught at “a very early stage,” and that he will have it removed this week. He is 71 and plays tennis every week. What neither he nor his spokesman addressed is a question any corporate board would be required to answer before its chief executive went into an operating room: who holds the authority while he is under. For a church of roughly 1.4 billion people the answer in canon law is nobody, because the rule that would name someone has never been written, and the man about to go under is a canon lawyer.
What the Vatican Said, and What It Left Out
The facts on the record are few and consistent. Leo said the nodule turned up during recent medical tests and is well localized. “The doctors believe it’s best to take action, so, following their advice, I’ve decided to have surgery to remove it,” he said, and he asked for prayers. His spokesman, Matteo Bruni, put the hospital stay in the “first days” of this week and the recovery at about a week. The operation is expected at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, which keeps an apartment for popes. On Monday the Vatican said he was keeping his normal schedule while he waits, and he still intends to make a November 6 to 17 trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru.
The Vatican has not described the procedure. Outside doctors quoted in the coverage have been careful to say that nodules are common and often benign and that removing one is how you find out. We are not going to guess past that. One detail is not in doubt: surgery to remove part of a lung is done under general anesthesia. The American Lung Association tells patients having a lobe removed that they will be “completely asleep.”
The Sentence in Canon Law That Points at Nothing
Canon 335 of the Code of Canon Law reads in full: “When the Roman See is vacant or entirely impeded, nothing is to be altered in the governance of the universal Church; the special laws issued for these circumstances, however, are to be observed.” There are two circumstances in that sentence and one special law. The vacant see, meaning a pope who has died or resigned, is governed by a 1996 constitution that spells out what the cardinals and the camerlengo may do until a conclave. For the impeded see, meaning a pope who is alive and cannot govern, no special law has been issued. The code does not even say what “entirely impeded” means for a pope.
It does say so for every other bishop on earth. Canons 412 and 413 define a diocese as impeded when its bishop is cut off by “captivity, banishment, exile, or incapacity,” and hand its governance to a coadjutor, an auxiliary or a priest from a list the bishop is told to draw up as soon as he takes office. A bishop with 40 parishes must name a stand-in. The bishop of Rome has no such list.
| Who is under anesthesia | The written rule | What happens to the authority |
|---|---|---|
| A U.S. president | 25th Amendment, Section 3 | He signs a letter and the vice president is acting president until he signs a second one. Used in 2002, 2007 and 2021. |
| A Catholic diocesan bishop | Canons 412 and 413 | The diocese is “impeded” and governance passes down a list the bishop wrote in advance. |
| A pope who has died or resigned | The 1996 constitution on the vacant see | The camerlengo and the cardinals handle limited ordinary business until a conclave. |
| A pope who is alive and unconscious | Canon 335 refers to “special laws” | None has been issued. Nothing transfers. |
Three Hours in 2023, With Nobody Holding the Pen
None of this is hypothetical. When Pope Francis had abdominal surgery in June 2023, he was under general anesthesia for three hours, and the Associated Press asked the same question and printed the answer in its headline: nothing happens to papal power when a pope is unconscious. The camerlengo did not step in, and neither did the secretary of state. “A brief period of impediment doesn’t create any problems,” Geraldina Boni, a canon law professor at the University of Bologna, said then. “The curial machine proceeds normally with ordinary administration.”
That holds until the afternoon something goes wrong. Ordinary administration can carry on without him. A decision only the pope can make cannot be made by anyone. When Joe Biden had a colonoscopy in November 2021, he signed power over at 10:10 a.m. and took it back at 11:35, which made Kamala Harris acting president for 85 minutes. The United States judged an hour and a half without a decision-maker to be too long. The Holy See accepted that risk for three hours in 2023 and is about to accept it again.
A Draft Has Been on the Table Since 2021
The fix exists on paper. Boni and a group of canonists published proposed norms in 2021 that would pass governance to the College of Cardinals when a pope is totally impeded, with a commission to govern during a temporary incapacity and medical reviews every six months. Francis did not adopt them. What he did instead was personal: he disclosed in 2022 that he had written a resignation letter early in his papacy in case illness left him unable to serve, handed it to his secretary of state and lost track of it. Paul VI wrote similar letters in 1965.
A letter in a drawer does not make an institution’s rules. Nobody outside knows what conditions Francis’s letter set, and a resignation counts in canon law only if it is freely and properly manifested, a standard a letter triggered by other people’s reading of a medical chart may not meet.
Leo Can Write This One Himself
Leo is unusually placed to end this. Before he was a bishop, Robert Prevost earned a doctorate in canon law in Rome in 1987, then spent nine years as the judicial vicar of the Archdiocese of Trujillo in Peru and taught the subject in its seminary. He was elected in May 2025 at 69.
We think he should sign the law before he is wheeled in.
If that is too fast, the week of recovery will do.
The draft is written. The gap has been public since at least 2021. Francis went under in 2023 with nothing on the books, and this patient spent nine years as a judge.
Leaving it for the next pope would be a decision too.