Pope Leo will not present Villanova sustainability medal due to upcoming surgery

ROME — Pope Leo XIV will not present an inaugural Villanova University sustainability medal in his name, as he is slated to undergo surgery in the coming days to remove a small growth discovered in his lung.

The 71-year-old pontiff said during his regular Sunday address in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City that doctors had detected a nodule “at a very early stage” that was “well localized.”

Pope Leo was scheduled to present the medal at a conference in Rome on Tuesday. Pope Leo planned to present the award to Cardinal Michael Czerny, who founded an HIV and AIDS treatment network in Africa and has directed the Institute for Human Rights of the Central American University in El Salvador.

The pope is the first pontiff born in the United States and a Villanova alumnus, having graduated from the university’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1977.

The sustainability award named for him is meant to honor an individual who “demonstrates exceptional commitment to advancing sustainability and ecological responsibility in their communities and beyond,” and who demonstrates “the ethical mandate of caring for the marginalized,” according to Villanova’s website.

It was not clear who would present the award in Pope Leo’s place.

About 350 people are attending the 2026 International Sustainability Conference, 90 of them Villanovans. While attendees were sad they wouldn’t be able to see Pope Leo present the medal, they said their primary concern was for the pope’s health.

“We pray that this is a simple procedure, that he is OK,” said the Rev. Peter M. Donohue, Villanova’s president and a friend of the pope. “May God’s healing presence be with you, Pope Leo.”

“We all are holding Pope Leo very close in our hearts,” said the Rev. John Lydon, inaugural director of Villanova’s Mother Cabrini Institute on Immigration, who graduated from Villanova the same year as the pope, then known as Robert Prevost, and maintains a friendship with him.

“I know that he has all of the conference’s and Villanova’s prayers,” said Finley Gust, 20, a sophomore environmental science major who will be making a presentation at the conference. “While we were hoping to see the pope, we all are just primarily praying for him in this time.”

Conference attendee Innocent Wefon, a Mill Hill missionary from Cameroon, said he had been looking forward to sharing the pope’s environmental vision.

“He’s a great environmentalist like his predecessor,” he said.

But he said his prayers were with the pope. “It was the saddest news I had yesterday,” he said.

Pope Leo’s surgery is expected to take place at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital. He is anticipated to require some hospitalization during a weeklong recovery, according to Vatican officials. This is the first known significant medical event of Pope Leo’s papacy, which began in May 2025.

“Thank you for your spiritual closeness, and I entrust myself to your prayers,” Leo told worshipers in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday.

The surgery is not expected to affect the pope’s upcoming trip to Latin America in November, Vatican officials said.

“I ask all people throughout the Catholic Church of Philadelphia to join their hearts and voices in prayerful solidarity for the intention of Pope Leo’s health,” Archbishop of Philadelphia Rev. Nelson J. Pérez said in a statement.

Lung nodules are fairly common and typically asymptomatic masses that are found to be noncancerous about 90% of the time, according to Stacey Su, chief of thoracic surgery at Temple Health’s Fox Chase Cancer Center. But it is nonetheless important to biopsy or remove them in case the nodule is cancerous, Su said.

“Lung cancer remains the biggest cancer killer in men and women worldwide,” she said, with 25% of lung cancer patients never having smoked.

Su said removing a nodule like Pope Leo’s typically is minimally invasive and would be performed laparoscopically or with the assistance of a surgical robot. Patients undergoing the procedure usually are hospitalized one to three days, and recover at home over the following three to four weeks, she said.

The Vatican has not released further details about Pope Leo’s nodule.