Vatican City, Jul 12, 2021 / 16:00 pm
Rumors started to fly around social media Monday claiming that Pope Francis was “likely” to resign from the papacy “in the next few hours.”
The pope is currently hospitalized after undergoing a surgery July 4 to remove part of his colon, fueling reports that health reasons could have prompted Francis to take this step.
In fact, there is no sign that Pope Francis intends to resign soon. And the confusing reports are probably explained by a mistranslation of Italian into English.
The initial social media reports of a pending papal resignation cited a July 12 post by the popular Italian Catholic news aggregator Il Sismografo.