Pope Francis failed to respond to any stimuli from medical staff as he lay open-eyed in a coma shortly before his death, his chief surgeon has revealed.
Sergio Alfieri, who coordinated the Holy Father’s doctors at the Gemelli hospital, said the late pontiff did not appear to have any breathing problems after he visited his Santa Marta residence.
But he did not respond to medical staff’s attempts to contact him or even painful stimuli.
It was at this point that the surgeon, who has now vowed to fulfil the one of the Pope’s final wishes, said there was ‘nothing more to be done’.
Alfieri also revealed one of Francis’s last wishes was to ‘take care of the abandoned embryos’.
Throughout his tenure, the late pontiff said that there is no outcome that can justify the use or destruction of embryos for scientific purposes.
In 2017, he said: ‘No ends, even noble in themselves, such as a predicted utility for science, for other human beings or for society, can justify the destruction of human embryos.’
He reaffirmed this in January, according to Alfieri.
The surgeon said he saw the late pontiff on Saturday afternoon in good spirits.
Francis seemed ‘very well’ and seemed determined to carry out his papal duties less than 48 hours before his death, the surgeon said.
He even asked Alfieri to organise a meeting with the 70 staff members who had treated him during his stay at the Rome hospital for Wednesday.
Early on Monday, however, the surgeon received a call from the Pope’s personal nurse, who summoned medical figures back to Gemelli hospital.
Alfieri told Massimiliano Strappetti that the pontiff’s time was likely coming to an end, however.
‘We risked letting him die during transport, I explained that hospitalisation would have been useless,’ he told Italian outlet Corriere Della Sera.
‘Strappetti knew that the Pope wanted to die at home, when we were at the Gemelli he always said so.
‘He passed away shortly after.
‘I remained there with Massimiliano, Andrea, the other nurses and the secretaries; then they all arrived and Cardinal Parolin asked us to pray and we recited the rosary with him. I felt privileged and now I can say that I was.
‘That morning I gave him a caress as a last farewell.’
When Alfieri first entered the Pope’s Santa Marta residence on Monday morning, he said it was ‘difficult to think that he needed to be hospitalised’.
Francis’s eyes were open and he had no breathing problems, but the surgeon said that he was not responding to any stimuli.
‘At that moment I understood that there was nothing more to be done,’ he added.
‘He was in a coma.’
The late Pope was admitted to hospital on February 14 this year and was subsequently diagnosed with double pneumonia.
He was released just over a month later and started to make public appearances, including his final one on Easter Sunday as he greeted thousands of people at St. Peter’s Square in his popemobile.
In the weeks before his death, he told doctors he did not want artificial respiration, according to Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
‘At 5am, the Holy Father woke up to drink a glass of water,’ Alfieri told the outlet.
‘He rolled onto his side and the nurse noticed that something was wrong.
‘He was struggling to react. The Vatican doctor on duty for resuscitation was called. They called me around 5:30 a.m. and I was on the scene within fifteen minutes. I found him with oxygen and an infusion.’
He died at 7.35am local time on Monday, just over two hours after Alfieri received the worrying phone call from Strappetti.
Just days before the pontiff’s death, the ailing pope told reporters he was ‘living it as best I can’ after he was plagued with health issues and reduced mobility caused in part by his advancing years and expanding waistline.
The pontiff had kept up a busy schedule until his final weeks. In September 2024, he carried out a 12-day tour across south-east Asia and Oceania that included visits to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Singapore.
His recovery from the latest procedures was unstable, with doctors fearing on a few occasions that his end was nearing.
Alfieri said that on one instance, the pontiff ‘surprised everyone’ by making it through a particularly bad night.
He suggested that Francis behaved as if he had a clear purpose as he approached his death.
He said: ‘Going back to work was part of the therapy and he never exposed himself to danger.
‘It’s as if, approaching the end, he decided to do everything he had to.
‘I have the clear feeling that he felt he had to do a series of things before dying.’
This included one last ride in the popemobile to greet worshippers on Sunday.
‘Do you think I can manage it?’ he had asked Strappetti before taking the plunge, according to the Vatican News, the Holy See’s media outlet.
The medic, whom he had previously credited for saving his life, reassured him.
Francis then spent about 15 minutes waving at the crowd and blessing babies from his popemobile, flanked by numerous bodyguards.
In what were some of his final words, he told his personal nurse afterwards: ‘Thank you for bringing me back to the square.’
In the interview, Alfieri also claimed the Pope reaffirmed his wish to protect embryos from being destroyed.
‘He was clear: “They are life, we cannot allow them to be used for experimentation or to be lost. It would be murder,” he said.
‘We were evaluating, also with the Ministry of Health, among the various options, how to release them for adoption but there was no time for the Pope to make his decision effective.
‘My commitment now will be, if the conditions are right, to make this wish come true.’
He said he will raise the issue with Italian Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci.
Alfieri is on the board of the Gemelli Hospital Foundation and the Vatican Health Commission and operated twice on Francis at Gemelli Hospital, in July 2021 and June 2023. Both operations were successful.