The director of the Vatican press office, Matteo Bruni, has informed this morning that the Papa was able to rest well the night before. The CT scan performed yesterday, February 18, "showed the onset of bilateral pneumonia" which, given the Pontiff's respiratory problems have resulted in "bronchiectasis", a widening of the airways that makes a person more susceptible to infections and "asthmatic bronchitis" and, consequently, "therapeutic treatment is more complex," the bulletin had said.
After breakfast he would read some newspapers and then engage in work activities with his closest collaborators.
In the afternoon, the Holy See again reported that "the Holy Father's clinical conditions appear to be stationary. The blood tests, evaluated by the medical staff, show a slight improvement, especially in the inflammatory indexes".
Before lunch he received the Eucharist and, in the afternoon, he was visited by the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, with whom he spent 20 minutes in private. At the end of the meeting, Meloni herself said in a press release that she was "very happy to have found him attentive and receptive. We joked as usual. He has not lost his proverbial sense of humor".
