King Charles and Queen Camilla pay a surprise visit to recovering Pope Francis during Italy trip
The pope met privately with the royals, the Vatican said in a statement.
'During the meeting, the Pope expressed his good wishes to Their Majesties on the occasion of their wedding anniversary and reciprocated His Majesty's wishes a speedy recovery of his health,' the Vatican said.
Buckingham Palace confirmed the meeting, saying that the couple 'were delighted the Pope was well enough to host them - and to have had the opportunity to share their best wishes in person.'
The 88-year-old pontiff has been recovering from a life-threatening bout of double pneumonia that landed him in hospital for five weeks in February and March. Charles, meanwhile, has been battling cancer since last year.
Wednesday's meeting came as a surprise after the palace announced last month that the royals had postponed a planned state visit to the Vatican to offer the pope more time to recuperate.
A royal source told CNN on Wednesday that Francis had extended an invitation for a private audience to Charles and Camilla after their official visit was canceled, but that the meeting was subject to the pope's health and only confirmed on Wednesday morning.
The meeting took place on Wednesday afternoon after Charles became the first British monarch to address both houses of Italian parliament. It lasted around 20 minutes and it is understood that the pope took the opportunity to wish the couple a happy anniversary.
The encounter was the third time Charles and Francis have crossed paths - though it was the first since the King's coronation. CNN understands there was an exchange of gifts, and Charles can be seen holding a small red box in the photo of the meeting released by the Vatican on Thursday.
Charles previously visited the Vatican in 2019 for the canonization of Cardinal John Henry Newman, the first Englishman to be made a saint since 1970. He also traveled to the Holy See with Camilla in 2017.
Earlier this week, Francis appeared to be in good spirits at his first public appearance since being released from hospital just over two weeks ago.
The pope smiled as he greeted crowds in the Vatican on Sunday, sitting in a wheelchair and wearing what appeared to be a nasal cannula to help with his breathing.
In a photo of Francis greeting the royal couple on Wednesday, the pontiff was not wearing the breathing aid.
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Charles and Camilla are in Italy on a four-day state visit. They received a full ceremonial welcome on Tuesday, meeting President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale Palace before viewing a fly-past by aerial acrobatics teams from the Italian and British air forces.
Earlier Wednesday, Charles met Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The final day of the trip has a literary theme to it. The royal couple will relocate from Rome to Ravenna in northeastern Italy on Thursday, where they will visit the tomb of Italian poet and writer Dante Alighieri, before Camilla tours the Byron Museum to explore the Romantic poet's life in Italy. The state visit will conclude with a final engagement at Ravenna's market in Piazza del Popolo, where they will attend a food festival and meet local farmers and producers.
The trip comes less than two weeks after Charles was briefly hospitalized after experiencing 'temporary side effects' from a scheduled cancer treatment, according to the palace. While causing him to cancel a day's worth of engagements, the King's experience was not out of the ordinary, according to a royal source, and he appeared to recover quickly.
In February last year, Charles revealed he had been diagnosed with an unspecified form of cancer and stepped away from public duties for several months for treatment. He resumed official engagements in April last year after doctors said they were 'very encouraged' by his progress.
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The podcast Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the medical science behind some of life's mysteries big and small. You can listen to episodes here. Parenting is not for the faint of heart. It can take new parents a beat or two to fully tune in to what their baby's cries could mean. So many small but consequential decisions need to be made on a daily, if not hourly, basis. There are also questions. Many questions. At a time when misinformation abounds, pediatrician Dr. David Hill is the calm voice of reassurance and reason, grounded in science. He encourages new parents to ask their baby's pediatrician questions, including about any advice they find on the internet. 'People come to me with stuff all the time,' Hill said, noting the importance of forging a solid parent-pediatrician relationship. That trust, he said, is what's 'going to steer us through this swamp of misinformation and disinformation that's out there right now.' Hill is a father of five in a blended family who has been in practice for more than 25 years. He has been the associate medical editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics' book 'Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5, 8th edition,' and is slated to be the editor-in-chief for the next edition. He also cohosts the academy's podcast 'Pediatrics On Call.' 'The question I get the most often from new parents, and even those who have been at it for a while is, is this normal?' Hill told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently on his podcast, Chasing Life. 'As somebody who's seen probably over 10,000 children … it is a joy for me to almost always be able to reassure, and be like, 'Yeah. That's fine. They do that. Kids do a lot of weird things, and they do a lot of things at their own pace,' Hill said. 'Normal can be all over the map.' You can listen to the podcast's full episode here. Hill said he strongly urges parents to seek out trusted, reliable sources for guidance. 'Sources of information that have been validated, that use real data,' he said. 'And honestly, talk to your child's doctor — develop that relationship, because that's what we've dedicated our lives to doing.' Hill works closely with the AAP on the organization's parent-facing information. 'I do that because I know, over decades of experience, how dedicated everybody in that group is to making sure we get this right, including being willing to get egg on our faces and say, 'You know what? We were wrong,' when we were wrong,' Hill said. 'And that's really critical. Anybody who's never wrong, I don't trust, because none of us is perfect.' During the decades Hill has been in practice, he has witnessed some of the babies he saw at the start of his career become parents themselves. During that time, he has also watched the science of child health evolve. 'What I tell these new parents is sometimes the complete opposite of what I said when they were babies!' he said via email. Here are the five biggest changes Hill has seen over his career. Safe sleep practices Sleep guidelines literally flipped in 1994, when Hill finished medical school. That year, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development launched the first 'Back to Sleep' campaign urging parents to put their baby to sleep on their back. Before then, parents had been told to put an infant to sleep on the belly to avoid aspiration. But that's not all. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission banned drop-side cribs from the marketplace in 2011 and warned against inclined sleepers in 2019, Hill said. And the Safe Sleep for Babies Act, signed into federal law in 2022, outright banned the sale of drop-side cribs and crib bumpers that could potentially suffocate infants. He noted that in 1990, there were 154 sudden unexpected infant deaths per 100,000 babies, a number that fell 44% to a low of 86 in 2011. (It has since gone up to 100 deaths per 100,000 in 2022). 'While some of those deaths are from mysterious or unavoidable causes,' he said, 'many could still be prevented by following all the safe sleep guidelines, including not only placing infants on their backs to sleep, but never co-sleeping (and) avoiding soft bedding.' Advice to prevent food allergies Complete avoidance is out, and small exposures are in. 'I still remember in 2015 searching all the drawers in our practice for outdated infant feeding handouts that, if parents followed them, could put their babies at increased risk of developing life-threatening food allergies,' Hill said. 'These handouts told parents to avoid giving their infants and toddlers anything containing peanuts or eggs until they turned at least 2 years old, even 3 if they had eczema or a family history of allergies.' But, Hill said, in 2015, the results of the LEAP trial confirmed what some earlier studies had suggested: 'That it wasn't early peanut exposure that had caused a doubling of peanut allergies in the preceding decade. It was the advice in these handouts!' he said. Now parents and guardians are advised to introduce peanut-containing products and eggs along with other solid foods in the first year of life, as soon as babies are safely taking solids, usually around 6 months of age. Preventing babies from having any exposure to potential allergens apparently left their immune systems oversensitive when they finally did encounter them later on. Umbilical cord care Umbilical cords used to be treated with a messy (for doctors) purple 'triple' dye — an antiseptic to keep bacterial infections at bay. Now, the recommendation in well-resourced countries and communities is to let the cord dry on its own — and to keep a close eye on it. 'The purpose of the dye was to prevent potentially dangerous infections of the umbilical cord and surrounding tissues (omphalitis),' Hill said. 'Then, a few brave souls, perhaps fed up with their dry-cleaning bills, decided to see what would happen if we used alcohol instead of the dye. It turned out … nothing.' Hill said the next step was to just let the cord dry on its own, taking care not to trap it in a wet or soiled diaper for extended periods and to avoid soaking it at bathtime. That practice is where the guidance stands today. Some known risk factors for omphalitis, Hill said, include low birth weight, prolonged rupture of membranes or prolonged labor, maternal infection, nonsterile delivery or home birth, and improper cord care. 'If you see the skin around the belly button turning red or notice an unusually foul discharge, get your baby seen,' he advised. What about bathing? Should new parents avoid baths until the cord falls off? 'Advice on this one varies, but it's not clear there's any more danger from a brief immersion than from a sponge bath,' he said. New and better vaccines The vaccination schedule for infants and children has been updated throughout the years as new shots become available, offering better protection against childhood scourges. 'My dad is also a pediatrician, and I grew up hearing horror stories of babies suffering from meningitis and sepsis. It seems my dad was always dashing off to the hospital to perform spinal taps,' Hill recalled. 'This started to change, however, in 1985, when a vaccine against Haemophilus influenza B, one of the most dreaded infections of childhood, came out. 'In training and early in my career, I saw awful infections from another bacteria, pneumococcal pneumonia. These infections became much rarer in 2000, when the first pneumococcal vaccine for children came out,' he said. 'Since then, that vaccine has expanded from covering seven subtypes of pneumococcus to covering as many as 23.' Just in the past year, Hill said he witnessed another infantile infection he dreaded, RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, plummet in frequency and severity thanks to both vaccines for expectant mothers and antibody injections for babies. Considering the big picture Another change involves a paradigm shift in the way pediatricians think about health and well-being, Hill said. 'In pediatrics, one of those tectonic shifts hit in 1998, the year I started practice and the year the ACEs Study came out,' he said, referring to a study that looked at adverse childhood experiences. Those potentially traumatic events include physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse; the death of a parent; mental illness; or violence or substance abuse in the household, any of which can create toxic stress in a child, leading to changes in brain development and affecting future mental, physical and emotional health. 'Many people had noticed that traumatic events in childhood … seemed to impact later health,' Hill said. 'The ACEs Study measured and quantified the extent and duration of these effects, and the results were more dramatic and longer-lasting than anyone had guessed.' An explosion of research followed, Hill said, which led to a new approach in pediatrics. 'Every child faces stressful events, some severe enough to impact their health. But the safe, stable, nurturing relationships that children build with the adults around them can protect them,' he explained. 'Understanding these interactions inspires trauma-informed care, an effort to work with families to address the stresses in their lives and to build those emotional connections that can help their children thrive.' Under this approach, Hill said, pediatricians pivoted from asking 'What's wrong with you?' to asking 'What happened to you, and how can we help?' 'A key concept here is the 'good enough parent,'' he said. 'No parent is perfect, but perfection is not required to be safe, stable, and nurturing.' As a parent himself, Hill said that thought 'brings me a sigh of relief.' We hope these five tips help you catch up on the latest parenting guidance. Listen to the full episode here. And join us next week for a new episode of the Chasing Life podcast. CNN Podcasts' Jennifer Lai contributed to this report. Solve the daily Crossword
