In the days leading up to Christmas, Pope Francis had a message to those celebrating Christmas: Be humble and don’t forget about Ukraine.

“Let’s renew our closeness to the battered people of #Ukraine, persevering in fervent #prayer for our brothers and sisters who are suffering so much. Let us celebrate #Christmas in a humbler way, with simpler gifts, and let us send what we save to the Ukrainian people who need it,” Pope Francis wrote on Twitter.

According to Vatican News, Francis called on everyone to "renew our closeness to the battered Ukrainian people"

Francis has repeatedly expressed his support for Ukraine and opposition to Russia’s invasion.

“Sadly, at this moment Europe, and especially families in Europe, are undergoing tragic and dramatic experiences as a result of the war in Ukraine,” Pope Francis said earlier this year. “Mothers and fathers, regardless of their nationality, do not want war. The family is the school of peace. Indeed, families and family networks have been and continue to be at the forefront of welcoming refugees, particularly in Lithuania, Poland and Hungary.”

The Pope has expressed a desire to visit Ukraine but wants to go at “the right time.”

ROME —

Pope Francis underwent successful surgery Wednesday to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair a hernia in his abdominal wall, the latest maladies to befall the 86-year-old pontiff who had part of his colon removed two years ago.

The Vatican said there were no complications during the three-hour surgery, which required Francis to be under general anesthesia. The pontiff was expected to remain at Rome’s Gemelli hospital for several days, and all papal audiences were canceled through June 18.

Dr. Sergio Alfieri, director of abdominal and endocrine sciences at Gemelli, who also performed Francis’ 2021 colon surgery, said the operation was successful. A short time later, the pope was awake, alert and even joking.

“When will we do the third one?” he quoted Francis as saying.

During the operation, doctors removed adhesions, or internal scarring, on the intestine that had caused a partial blockage, as well as pain in recent months. Alfieri revealed that Francis had undergone previous undisclosed abdominal surgeries sometime before 2013 in Argentina, which had also caused scarring.

To repair the hernia that had formed over a previous scar, a prosthetic mesh was placed in the abdominal wall, Alfieri said. He added that the pope was suffering from no other pathologies, that the tissue removed was benign and that after he recovers, he should be fine.

A feared protrusion, or bulging of the intestine through the hernia tear, was apparently not found.

“It appears they operated on him in a timely fashion with no compromise to his intestine,” said Dr. Walter Longo, chief of colon and rectal surgery at Yale University School of Medicine, who did not participate in the surgery and commented after consulting the Vatican statement on the procedure.

Video below: Pope Francis hospitalized in July 2021 for intestinal surgery

Hernia operations are rarely performed on an emergency basis, and Alfieri said the surgery had been planned. While unannounced publicly, it appeared timed so Francis would have ample time for recovery ahead of a busy travel schedule later this summer.

At three hours, the pope’s procedure was considerably longer than the standard 60 to 90 minutes doctors say a hernia operation usually takes, but Alfieri noted that the scar tissue from the previous surgeries was completely removed.

Spending more time under anesthesia, coupled with being on a ventilator for so long — in someone who has lost part of one lung as a young man — could put the pontiff at risk of breathing complications or a longer-than-expected recovery time, experts said.

Francis remained in charge of the Vatican and the 1.3-billion-strong Catholic Church, even while unconscious and in the hospital, according to canon law.

In July 2021, Francis spent 10 days at Gemelli to remove 13 inches of his large intestine. In an interview with The Associated Press in January, Francis said the diverticulosis, or bulges in his intestinal wall, that prompted that surgery had returned.

After that surgery, Francis lamented that he hadn’t responded well to the general anesthetic. That reaction in part explained his refusal to have surgery to repair strained knee ligaments that have forced him to use a wheelchair and walker for over a year.

However, Alfieri said Francis had no adverse reactions to the anesthesia in 2021 or Wednesday.

“Clearly no one likes to be operated on and put to sleep because the moment we're put under, we lose consciousness,” he told an evening news conference at the hospital with the Vatican spokesman by his side. "But there was no physiological problem two years ago or today."

Dr. Manish Chand, a professor of surgery at University College London who specializes in colorectal surgery, said the greatest issue afterwards would be pain management and making sure the wound heals properly.

“In the first six weeks after this type of surgery, you’re at risk of getting a recurrence again,” he said. To avoid that, patients are advised not to do anything strenuous.

Dr. Robin Phillips, an emeritus professor of colorectal surgery at Imperial College London, pointed out that abdominal surgery can also compromise lung function.

The Argentine pope had part of one lung removed when he was a young man. In late March, Francis spent three days at Gemelli for bronchitis and was treated with intravenous antibiotics. He emerged April 1 saying “Still alive!”

“I suspect they are doing it now because they are worried it might become more complicated and result in an emergency operation, which would carry an even bigger risk than leaving it alone or operating now,” Phillips said.

After celebrating his weekly general audience Wednesday, the pope was driven in his Fiat 500 out of the Vatican shortly after 11 a.m. and arrived at the Gemelli some 20 minutes later, escorted by police.

“The stay at the health facility will last several days to allow for the normal post-operative course and full functional recovery,” the Vatican said in a statement.

The pope had appeared in good form Wednesday morning at his audience in St. Peter’s Square, zipping around the square in his popemobile greeting the faithful. He also had two meetings beforehand, the Vatican said.

Francis has had a packed schedule of late, with multiple audiences each day. The Vatican recently confirmed a travel-filled August, when the Holy See and Italy are usually on vacation. He has a four-day visit to Portugal scheduled for the first week of August and a similarly long trip to Mongolia starting Aug. 31.

In a sign that the trips were still on, the Vatican on Tuesday released the planned itinerary for Francis’ visit to Portugal for World Youth Day events from Aug. 2 to Aug. 6. The busy schedule includes all the protocol meetings of an official state visit plus multiple events with young people and a day trip to the Marian shrine at Fatima.

Video above: President Joe Biden asks people to say an "extra prayer" for Pope Francis during an event at the White House

Pope Francis was hospitalized with a respiratory infection Wednesday after experiencing difficulty breathing in recent days and will remain in the Rome hospital for several days of treatment, the Vatican said.

The 86-year-old pope, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, doesn't have COVID-19, spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement late Wednesday.

The hospitalization was the first since Francis spent 10 days at the Gemelli hospital in July 2021 to have 33 centimeters (13 inches) of his colon removed.

It immediately raised questions about Francis' overall health, and his ability to celebrate the busy Holy Week events that are due to begin this weekend with Palm Sunday.

Bruni said Francis had had trouble breathing in recent days and went to the Gemelli hospital Wednesday for tests.

“The tests showed a respiratory infection (COVID-19 infection excluded) that will require some days of medical treatment in the hospital,” Bruni's statement said.

Francis appeared in relatively good form during his regularly scheduled general audience earlier Wednesday, though he grimaced strongly while getting in and out of the “popemobile.” He nevertheless rode around the square as usual, kissing babies and greeting the faithful.

Bruni said Francis, an Argentine Jesuit, was grateful for the prayers and messages wishing him a speedy recovery, including from the Italian bishops conference.

President Joe Biden, at the start of an Oval Office meeting with President Alberto Fernández of Argentina, told reporters he had just learned of Francis’s health problems and said he was concerned about his dear “friend.”

Francis had part of one lung removed when he was a young man due to a respiratory infection, and he often speaks in a whisper. But he got through the worst phases of the COVID-19 pandemic without at least any public word of ever testing positive.

Related video below: Pope Francis is welcomed in Congo last month

Francis was scheduled to celebrate Palm Sunday this weekend, kicking off the Vatican's Holy Week observances: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil and finally Easter Sunday on April 9. He has canceled all audiences through Friday, but it wasn't clear whether he could keep the Holy Week plans.

Francis has used a wheelchair for over a year due to strained ligaments in his right knee and a small knee fracture. He has said the injury was healing and been walking more with a cane of late.

Francis also has said he resisted having surgery for the knee problems because he didn't respond well to general anesthesia during the 2021 intestinal surgery.

He said soon after the surgery that he had recovered fully and could eat normally. But in a Jan. 24 interview with The Associated Press, Francis said his diverticulosis, or bulges in the intestinal wall, had “returned."

Pope Francis said Wednesday that his predecessor Pope Benedict is "very sick" and asked for prayers for the 95-year-old former pontiff.

"I want to ask you all for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict who sustains the Church in his silence. He is very sick," Francis said during his general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday.

"We ask the Lord to console and sustain him in this witness of love for the Church to the very end."

In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world by making the almost unprecedented decision to resign from his position, citing "advanced age."

Benedict's announcement marked the first time a pope had stepped down in nearly 600 years. The last pope to resign before his death was Gregory XII, who in 1415 quit to end a civil war within the Catholic Church in which more than one man claimed to be pope.

In 2020, the Vatican said Benedict had suffered from a "painful but not serious condition," following reports in German media that he was ill.

Two years earlier, in a rare public letter published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Benedict wrote that "in the slow waning of my physical forces, inwardly I am on a pilgrimage toward Home."

Benedict's legacy has been clouded by recent scrutiny of his time as Archbishop of Munich and Freising, between 1977 and 1982, after a Church-commissioned report into abuse by Catholic clergy there was published in January.

The report found that he had been informed of four cases of sexual abuse involving minors -- including two during his time in Munich -- but failed to act, and that he had attended a meeting about an abusive priest.

Benedict later pushed back against those allegations, admitting he had attended the meeting but denying he intentionally concealed his presence.

VATICAN CITY —

President Joe Biden said Pope Francis told him he should continue to receive Communion, as the world's two most prominent Roman Catholics ran overtime in highly personal discussions on climate change, poverty and the coronavirus pandemic that also touched on the loss of the president's adult son and jokes about aging well.

Biden's support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage has has put him at odds with many U.S. bishops, some of whom have suggested he should be denied Communion.

Biden said abortion did not come up in the meeting at the Vatican. “We just talked about the fact he was happy that I was a good Catholic and I should keep receiving communion,” Biden said.

Video released by the Vatican showed several warm, relaxed moments between Francis and Biden as they repeatedly shook hands and smiled. Francis often sports a dour look, especially in official photos, but he seemed in good spirits Friday. The private meeting lasted about 75 minutes, according to the Vatican, more than double the normal length of an audience with the pontiff.

The pair sat across from one another at a desk in the papal library, accompanied by a translator. They then proceeded to an exchange of gifts and a broader meeting including the first lady and top officials. The lengthy session put Biden more than an hour behind schedule.

“Biden thanked His Holiness for his advocacy for the world’s poor and those suffering from hunger, conflict, and persecution,” the White House said. "He lauded Pope Francis’ leadership in fighting the climate crisis, as well as his advocacy to ensure the pandemic ends for everyone through vaccine sharing and an equitable global economic recovery.”

Biden takes pride in his Catholic faith, using it as a moral guidepost to shape many of his social and economic policies. He wears a rosary and attends Mass weekly.

After leaving the Vatican, Biden said he had a “wonderful time” and that the pope prayed for him and blessed his rosary beads. Asked what the prayer was about, Biden replied, “Peace.”

A dozen Swiss Guards in their blue and gold striped uniforms and red-plumed halberds stood at attention in the San Damaso courtyard as Biden and his wife, Jill, arrived. They were received by Monsignor Leonardo Sapienza, who runs the papal household, and then greeted one by one the papal ushers, or papal gentlemen, who lined up in the courtyard.

“It’s good to be back,” Biden said as he shook the hand of one of them. “I’m Jill’s husband,” he told another before he was ushered into the frescoed Apostolic Palace and taken upstairs to the pope’s private library.

According to the Vatican, Biden presented Francis a woven chasuble, or liturgical vestment, made in 1930 by the famed papal tailor Gammarelli and used by the pope’s Jesuit order in the U.S., where it was held in the archives of Holy Trinity Church, Biden’s regular parish in Washington. The White House said it would make a donation to charity in the pope’s name.

Holy Trinity is steeped in American history and played a role in advocating for abolition, desegregation and civil rights since it was founded in 1787. President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic U.S. president, also worshipped there.

Biden also slipped what's known as a challenge coin into the pope's palm during a handshake, and hailed Francis as “the most significant warrior for peace I’ve ever met.”

The personalized coin depicts Biden's home state of Delaware and a reference to his late son Beau's military unit, the 261st Theater Tactical Signal Brigade. Biden told Francis that Beau would have wanted him to present the coin to the pope.

"The tradition is, and I’m only kidding about this, but next time I see you, if you don’t have it, you have to buy the drinks," Biden said, referring to the coin. He added: “I’m the only Irishman you’ve ever met who's never had a drink.”

Francis laughed and responded: “The Irish brought whisky.”

Biden, 78, also relayed the story of American baseball player Satchel Paige, a Black pitcher who played late into his fifties, in a parable about aging. “'How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were,'" Biden quoted Paige as saying. "You’re 65, I’m 60,” Biden added, as Francis, 84, pointed to his head and laughed.

Francis presented Biden with a ceramic tile depicting the iconography of the pilgrim, as well as a collection of the pope’s main teaching documents, the Vatican said. In the Vatican video, he could be heard asking Jill Biden to “pray for me.”

The warm encounter stood in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s 2017 meeting with Francis, with whom the former president had a prickly relationship. Photos from that 30-minute meeting showed a stone-faced Francis standing beside a grinning Trump. Biden's meeting also was longer than the 52 minutes Barack Obama spent with Francis in 2014.

Biden is visiting Rome and then Glasgow, Scotland, for back-to-back summits, first a gathering for leaders of Group of 20 leading and developing nations and then a global climate conference.

Biden and Francis have previously met three times but Friday's encounter was their first since Biden became president.

Biden also met separately Friday with Group of 20 summit hosts Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

He will end the day by meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, part of an effort to mend relations with France after the U.S. and U.K. decided to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, scotching an existing French contract.

Biden’s meeting with Pope Francis generated some controversy in advance as the Vatican on Thursday abruptly canceled plans to broadcast the meeting with Biden live and denied press access. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the revised television plan reflected the virus protocol for all heads of state audiences, though he didn’t say why more robust live TV coverage had been initially scheduled and then canceled.

The Vatican instead provide edited footage of the encounter to accredited media.

The visit came as U.S. bishops prepared to meet in roughly three weeks in Baltimore for their annual fall convention. Among the agenda items is an effort by conservatives to disqualify Biden from receiving Communion. Any document emerging from the event is unlikely to single out the president by name, but he still could face some form of rebuke.

Francis has stressed that he will not reject political leaders who support abortion rights, though Catholic policy allows individual bishops to choose whether to prevent people from taking Communion.

NEW YORK —

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday temporarily suspending New York state from enforcing its vaccine mandate if health care workers claim a religious exemption.

The order bars the New York State Department of Health from requiring employers to deny or revoke religious exemptions for the vaccine. The health department issued an order in August requiring all health care workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Sept. 27.

Seventeen Catholic and Baptist medical professionals who say they oppose getting the vaccine for religious reasons sought to prevent the state from enforcing the mandate, according to a federal complaint filed in New York on Monday.

The professionals — nine doctors, five nurses, a nuclear medicine technologist, a physician liaison and a rehabilitation therapist — wanted a judgment declaring the mandate "unconstitutional, unlawful, and unenforceable," according to the lawsuit.

"The Vaccine Mandate emerges in the context of an atmosphere of fear and irrationality in which the unvaccinated are threatened with being reduced to a caste of untouchables if they will not consent to being injected, even 'continuously,' with vaccines that violate their religious beliefs," the complaint said.

They are seeking a temporary statewide restraining order against the mandate followed by a permanent injunction, according to the lawsuit.

The judge set a Sept. 22 deadline for defendants to oppose the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction, and he scheduled a hearing in the case for Sept. 28.

The mandate, the lawsuit argues, overrides protections provided under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, New York State's Human Rights Law, the Supremacy Clause as well as the First and 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The lawsuit names New York Attorney General Letitia James, Commissioner Howard Zucker of the State Department of Health and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul as defendants in the complaint.

CNN reached out to Hochul's office but was told it doesn't comment on pending litigation. CNN also reached out to Hochul's administration, the Department of Health and the attorney general's office for comment and was referred to the Department of Health.

Debate surrounding vaccine mandates has picked up since President Joe Biden announced a new plan to tackle the pandemic last week, which includes vaccine requirements in some workplaces.

Health experts and many officials have called vaccine mandates a necessary step to protect the population and slow the spread of the virus. But there has also been blowback from some state leaders, such as Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who have called the announcement at the federal level an overreach and pledged to challenge it in court.

Pope Francis declares vaccination 'the moral choice'

The plaintiffs cited religious convictions that prevent them from being inoculated with vaccines that they said "were tested, developed or produced with fetal cells line derived from procured abortions."

Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna used cell lines originating from fetal tissue to test their vaccines, but they are not used in vaccine manufacturing or production, whereas fetal cell lines were used in Johnson & Johnson's "development, confirmation and production," according to Dr. James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at Nebraska Medicine.

Those cells are thousands of generations removed from the original fetal tissue, said Lawler.

No major religious denomination has taken a stand opposing vaccination. Pope Francis declared it "the moral choice because it is about your life, but also the lives of others."

Last month, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas said it would not issue letters of exemption on religious grounds, according to a communication obtained by CNN.

"For the past several months, our Holy Father Pope Francis has made it clear that the various forms of COVID vaccines are morally acceptable, urging Catholics across the globe to become vaccinated, not only for their own safety and well-being, but also out of concern for the weak and vulnerable in our midst," Bishop George Leo Thomas said.

The Thomas More Society, a self-described pro-life group, provided the attorney for the 17 plaintiffs in this case.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis cracked down Friday on the spread of the old Latin Mass, reversing one of Pope Benedict XVI’s signature decisions in a major challenge to traditionalist Catholics who immediately decried it as an attack on them and the ancient liturgy.

Francis reimposed restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass that Benedict relaxed in 2007, and went further to limit its use. The pontiff said he was taking action because Benedict’s reform had become a source of division in the church and been exploited by Catholics opposed to the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church and its liturgy.

Critics said they had never before witnessed a pope so thoroughly reversing his predecessor. That the reversal concerned something so fundamental as the liturgy, while Benedict is still alive and living in the Vatican as a retired pope, only amplified the extraordinary nature of Francis’ move, which will surely result in more right-wing hostility directed at him.

Francis, 84, issued a new law requiring individual bishops to approve celebrations of the old Mass, also called the Tridentine Mass, and requiring newly ordained priests to receive explicit permission to celebrate it from their bishops, in consultation with the Vatican.

Under the new law, bishops must also determine if the current groups of faithful attached to the old Mass accept Vatican II, which allowed for Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin. These groups cannot use regular churches; instead, bishops must find alternate locations for them without creating new parishes.

In addition, Francis said bishops are no longer allowed to authorize the formation of any new pro-Latin Mass groups in their dioceses.

Francis said he was taking action to promote unity and heal divisions within the church that had grown since Benedict’s 2007 document, Summorum Pontificum. He said he based his decision on a 2020 Vatican survey of all the world’s bishops, whose “responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene.”

The pope’s rollback immediately created an uproar among traditionalists already opposed to Francis’ more progressive bent and nostalgic for Benedict’s doctrinaire papacy.

“This is an extremely disappointing document which entirely undoes the legal provisions,” of Benedict’s 2007 document, said Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales.

While Latin celebrations can continue, “the presumption is consistently against them: bishops are being invited to close them down,” Shaw said, adding that the requirement for Latin Masses to be held outside a parish was “unworkable.”

“This is an extraordinary rejection of the hard work for the church and the loyalty to the hierarchy which has characterized the movement for the Traditional Mass for many years, which I fear will foster a sense of alienation among those attached to the church’s ancient liturgy,” he said.

Benedict had issued his document in 2007 to reach out to a breakaway, schismatic group that celebrates the Latin Mass, the Society of St. Pius X, and which had split from Rome over the modernizing reforms of Vatican II.

But Francis said Benedict’s effort to foster unity had essentially backfired.

The opportunity offered by Benedict, the pope said in a letter to bishops accompanying the new law, was instead “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.”

Francis said he was “saddened” that the use of the old Mass was accompanied by a rejection of Vatican II itself “with unfounded and unsustainable assertions that it betrayed the Tradition and the ‘true Church.’”

Christopher Bellitto, professor of church history at Kean University, said Francis was right to intervene, noting that Benedict’s original decision had had a slew of unintended consequences that not only created internal divisions but temporarily roiled relations with Jews.

“Francis hits it right on the head with his observation that Benedict’s 2007 loosening of regulations against the Latin rite allowed others to use it for division,” he said. “The blowback proves his point.”

The blowback was indeed fierce, though it’s also likely that many will simply ignore Francis’ decree and continue on as before with sympathetic bishops. Some of these traditionalists and Catholics already were among Francis’ fiercest critics, with some accusing him of heresy for having opened the door to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.

Rorate Caeli, a popular traditionalist blog run out of the U.S., said Francis’ “attack” was the strongest rebuke of a pope against his predecessors in living memory.

“Francis HATES US. Francis HATES Tradition. Francis HATES all that is good and beautiful,” the group tweeted. But it concluded: “FRANCIS WILL DIE, THE LATIN MASS WILL LIVE FOREVER.”

Messa in Latino, an Italian traditionalist blog, was also blistering in its criticism.

“Mercy always and only for sinners (who are not asked to repent) but no mercy for those few traditional Catholics,” the blog said Friday.

For years, though, Francis has made known his distaste of the old liturgy, privately labeling its adherents self-referential naval-gazers who are out of touch with the needs of the church. He has cracked down on religious orders that celebrated the old Mass exclusively and frequently decried the “rigidity” of tradition-minded priests who prioritize rules over pastoral accompaniment.

Traditionalists have insisted that the old liturgy was never abrogated and that Benedict’s 2007 reform had allowed it to flourish.

They point to the growth of traditionalist parishes, often frequented by young, large families, as well as new religious orders that celebrate the old liturgy. The Latin Mass Society claims the number of traditional Masses celebrated each Sunday in England and Wales had more than doubled since 2007, from 20 to 46.

But for many, the writing was on the wall as soon as Francis stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica after his 2013 election without the ermine-trimmed red velvet cape that was preferred by Benedict and is a symbol of the pre-Vatican II church.

The restrictions went into immediate effect with its publication in Friday’s official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has arrived at the Vatican after he was discharged from a Rome hospital 10 days after intestinal surgery to remove half of his colon.

Francis gave thanks for the success of the operation and offered prayers for others during a visit en route home to Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica.

The pope always visits the basilica after returning home from a foreign trip to pray before a beloved icon of the Virgin Mary.

The Ford car carrying Francis stopped briefly at the side entrance to Vatican City.

Francis emerged from the passenger seat with the aid of a bodyguard to greet some security guards standing outside.

He then got back in the car and proceeded to enter the Vatican through the Perugino gate on Wednesday.

Francis had half of his colon removed for a severe narrowing of his large intestine on July 4, his first major surgery since he became pope in 2013.

It was a planned procedure, scheduled for early July when the pope’s audiences are suspended anyway, and Francis would normally take some time off.

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican says Pope Francis has “reacted well” to planned intestinal surgery Sunday evening at a Rome hospital.

In a statement late Sunday, a Holy See spokesman says the 84-year-old Francis had general anesthesia during the surgery necessitated by a narrowing of the sigmoid portion of the large intestine.

Spokesman Matteo Bruni didn’t say how long the surgery lasted.

The pope's surgery took place after the Vatican released brief announcement Sunday afternoon. Just three hours earlier, Francis had cheerfully greeted the public in St. Peter’s Square and told them he will go to Hungary and Slovakia in September.

A week earlier, Francis, 84, had used the same appearance to ask the public for special prayers for himself, which might have hinted at the planned surgery at Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic.

Francis is in generally good health, but did have part of one lung removed as a young man.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has changed church law to explicitly criminalize the sexual abuse of adults by priests who abuse their authority.

It also says laypeople who hold church office can be sanctioned for sex abuse crimes.

The new provisions, released Tuesday after 14 years of study, were contained in the revised criminal law section of the Vatican’s Code of Canon Law, the in-house legal system that covers the 1.3-billion member Catholic Church.

The most significant changes aim to address major problems and shortcomings in the church’s handling of sexual abuse.

The laws recognize that adults, too, can be victimized by priests who abuse their authority, and said that laypeople in church offices can be punished for abusing minors as well as adults.

The Vatican also officially criminalized "grooming" minors or vulnerable adults by priests to compel them to engage in pornography. According to the Associated Press, it's the first time the Vatican has officially recognized the acts — commonly used by sexual predators in the hopes of building relationships with victims — as criminal.

The new laws also take steps to prevent priests and bishops from covering up abuse allegations and attempt to hold them responsible for "omissions and negligence in failing to properly investigate and sanction errant priests," the Associated Press reports.