A marble statue of late Pope John Paul II is backdropped by the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025, where Pope Francis was hospitalized Friday, Feb. 14, after a weeklong bout of bronchitis worsened and is receiving drug therapy for a respiratory tract infection. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis’ respiratory infection is presenting a “complex clinical picture” that will require further hospitalization, the Vatican said Monday, as concerns grew about the increasingly frail health of the 88-year-old pontiff.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the results of tests conducted in recent days and Monday indicate the pope is suffering from a polymicrobial respiratory tract infection that has necessitated a second change in his drug therapy since being hospitalized Friday. Scientists say polymicrobial diseases are caused by a mix of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites.

There was no timeframe given for his hospitalization, which at Day 4 has already sidelined Francis for longer than a 2023 hospitalization for pneumonia. Bruni said the complexity of his symptoms “will require an appropriate hospital stay.”

In a late update Monday, Bruni said Francis’ condition was “stationary,” and that he had resumed some work activities and reading.

Francis had part of one lung removed after a pulmonary infection as a young man and is prone to bouts of bronchitis in winter. He was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital in a “fair” condition on Friday after a weeklong bout of bronchitis worsened. Doctors confirmed a respiratory tract infection and prescribed “absolute rest” alongside unspecified drug therapies. Subsequent updates said his slight fever had gone away and that he was in “stationary” condition.

Bruni said Francis ate breakfast, read the newspapers and received the Eucharist on Monday after a third peaceful night. And in a sign Francis was still keeping up with some of the essentials of his routine, the parish priest of the Catholic Church in Gaza, the Rev. Gabriel Romanelli, reported that Francis had maintained his daily video call to the church on Friday and Saturday night. He sent a text message on Sunday.

“We heard his voice. It’s true, it was more tired,” Romanelli told Vatican News. “But we heard his voice clearly and he listened to us,” said the Argentine priest, whom Francis has phoned every day of the Gaza war.