Pope Francis has cancelled his weekly Sunday prayer appearance as the 88-year-old Pontiff remains in hospital receiving treatment for a respiratory tract infection.

Francis was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Friday morning having been suffering from bronchitis for over a week.

In a statement, the Vatican confirmed the Pope’s absence from Sunday prayer and reiterated that Francis would remain under medical care for as long as necessary for his treatment to prove successful.

Providing an update on the 88-year-old, the Vatican stated the decision to rest had been made by his medical team ‘to facilitate his recovery’.

The pope’s treatment on Saturday was ‘slightly modified based on further microbiological findings’, the statement added. ‘Today’s laboratory tests showed an improvement in some values.’

Despite this apparent improvement in the Pontiff’s health, no firm release date has been muted.

‘We will see how he reacts to treatment. I don’t have a precise date (for his release)’, said Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican’s press office.

A later updated provided by the Vatican added that Francis ‘did not show any fever’ today and that he had received Communion before ‘alternating his rest between prayer and reading’.

Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, which is the city’s largest, is well known for having a special suite fitted for treating popes.

This papal suite was often used in the past to treat the late Pope John Paul II during his 26-year papacy.

Francis himself previously visited the ward back in June of 2023 when he was treated for an abdominal hernia.

Outside the hospital, worshipers gathered at its statue of John Paul II to hold a communal prayer for Francis.

‘We found out yesterday morning, with sadness,’ said Giovanni Di Muro, an Italian who was visiting his son in hospital. ‘We hope it’s nothing serious, and that everything will be fine.’

Francis has endured a number of health problems over the last several years including influenza and abdominal surgery.

He has also been suffering from a spate a lung infections brought about by the fact he underwent major lung surgery in his younger years after developing a case of pleurisy.

This is the Pope’s fourth time in Gemelli Hospital’s papal suite, with the 88-year-old now using a wheelchair, walker or cane due to a number of recent falls.

Further signs of the Pontiff’s health struggles were noted last month when he was unable to read statements at several public events, with his aides instead reading out prepared remarks.

Despite these recent health issues though, Francis had been keeping up with a frenetic workload since the turn of the New Year.

Beginning at Christmas, he has had to hold Jubilee events every other weekend and also managed to pack his days with multiple private audiences.

On Monday alone, he met separately with the Vatican ambassador to Croatia, a group of visiting bishops from Madagascar, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, a candidate to be the next UNESCO chief, the rector of the grand mosque of Paris and Nikas Safronov, a Russian painter.

This weekend, Francis had been due to meet with artists and preside over a Jubilee audience for them at Rome’s famed Cinecitta studios, but this appearance has since been cancelled by the Vatican.