Pope agrees to treat painful knee with therapeutic injections

Thursday, May 5th, 2022

Pope Francis will have therapeutic injections to try to alleviate the pain in his right knee, he told an Italian newspaper.

“I have a torn ligament; I will have a procedure with injections and we will see,” he said in an interview published May 3 in Corriere della Sera.

“I’ve been like this for a while now, I can’t walk,” he said. “Once upon a time, popes would go around on the ‘sedia gestatoria,’” a ceremonial throne with long handles carried on aides’ shoulders that was used until 1978.

“You also need a bit of suffering, of humiliation …” he said.

On Thursday, for the first time in public, he used a wheelchair to get around.

Before then he had managed to walk, with help, the 10 metres from the side entrance to his seat on the stage in the Vatican’s general audience hall.

After being wheeled to his seat on the stage an aide helped him out of the wheelchair and onto his seat.

The 85-year-old pope has had to cancel or curtail activities several times over the past month because of the pain in his right knee.

A Vatican source said the pope was not expected to make any changes to his schedule over the next few weeks – though the wheelchair would likely become a familiar sight as Francis tried to stay off his feet as much as possible to help his knee heal.