VATICAN CITY — On Sunday at noon, Pope Leo, leader of this planet's largest colony of praying primates, informed an assembled square that imaging had located a nodule — a small, uninvited settlement of tissue — in one of his lungs. The news arrived during the Angelus, the weekly address in which the leader recites a prayer and blesses the crowd. He then blessed the crowd. The next morning he completed a regular morning of work. The Gemelli hospital, in Rome, holds his admission at the late-morning slot on Tuesday.
Our observation began at minute four of the address, when the word 'nodule' was placed between a prayer and a greeting to pilgrims. At minute five the square produced its first burst of applause; by minute nine, its third, at which point a pilgrim near us applauded the lung and then, for balance, the other lung. We logged one raised forest of phones and a single silence of 1.5 seconds, the local unit of concern. The nodule received nine seconds of the address. The hospital received one sentence. The applause received more. The applause closed at three. At minute thirteen the square began emptying toward lunch.
Monday's working morning ran as regular. Between nine and thirteen hundred hours we counted eleven visitors, one stack of folders, forty-one signatures, and zero mentions of the lung. A doctor's report crossed the corridor in a folder the same colour as the other folders. Nothing was cancelled. Nothing overran. The lung appeared on no agenda, agendas here requiring a title and a time slot, and the lung had neither.
"When he said nodule, we applauded," said Ornella Vecchi, 68, a retired schoolteacher who has attended the Sunday address for nineteen years. "When he named the hospital and gave the day, we applauded louder. A date comforts faster than a diagnosis. The nodule did not attend. Then we went home for lunch."
"Nothing in the morning moved," said Father Egidio Mancuso, who arranges the leader's audiences. "A nodule is not an appointment. It has no time slot and cannot be received. I checked the morning twice. The hospital was given the late-morning slot because the late-morning slot was free." In the corporate troops we monitor, a cough from the dominant primate — the local "CEO" — produces contingency papers within the hour. Here it produced a blessing and an unchanged diary.
Field observation resumes Tuesday at the Gemelli, late-morning slot. By our count the leader will then have completed one full working morning since the announcement; the nodule has completed none. The diary here is defended to the last organ. The lung will be seen in the slot that was free.
