JUST IN: Pope Leo XIV’s Doctors say “no further treatment is necessary.” @HolySeePress has just announced that Dr Luigi Carbone and Professor Stefano Margaritora have issued the following statement regarding the Pope’s postoperative recovery: “Today, the final histopathological findings and molecular biology analyses of the tissue removed during the surgical procedure performed on the Holy Father were reported. The results confirmed that the disease was a pulmonary adenocarcinoma and that it was localized. A subsequent oncological assessment confirmed that no further treatment is necessary.”

For decades it has been unfashionable across much of the West to discuss Christianity except in historical or condescending terms. That pattern is shifting. Pope Leo XIV’s open-air Mass in the Place de la Concorde drew an estimated 800,000 people, filling the square and the length of the Champs-Élysées. The scale of the spontaneous assembly astonished observers in a city long marked by anti-clerical tradition. The phenomenon is more consequential than episodic student unrest. It signals the practical exhaustion of secularist hostility to spiritual values and of progressive assumptions about the perfectibility of man. Historical experience suggests that religious vacuums tend to be filled by destructive ideologies or by charismatic pretenders to absolute authority. In the face of demographic and cultural pressures, including militant Islam, atheism is increasingly perceived as an inadequate substitute; soulless in conception and limited in practical resilience. The recovery of respect for Judeo-Christian foundations does not imply a return to earlier forms of religious militancy. But it does indicate a renewed determination to defend the civilizational inheritance those foundations have sustained.

JUST IN: Pope Leo XIV has been admitted to Gemelli Hospital and will undergo surgery this afternoon for a localized lung nodule. It will be performed by the thoracic surgery team led by Professor Stefano Margaritora. The surgery, which is usually performed under general anesthesia, will require a weeklong hospital stay. The Vatican yesterday announced that all of the Pope’s audiences through Oct. 20 are cancelled. @HolySeePress said further information will be provided this evening. vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/…

Coho salmon making their way up waterfalls to their final grounds in Vancouver Island. Their peak season there is starting about now. Such a cool capture.