Who Runs the Catholic Church When the Pope Is Hospitalized?

While Leo focuses on his recovery, all papal audiences have been canceled until Oct. 20. His time away from the Vatican has prompted questions about who, if anyone, oversees the church while a Pope is hospitalized.

Here’s what to know about the role of the Pope and how the Vatican will run in his absence.

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome and, under Catholic canon law, is described as “the head of the college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the pastor of the universal church on earth,” granting him “supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the church.”

Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic Church at the University of Oxford, says the Pope is essentially “the man who makes executive decisions about how the church is to be run [from] the appointment of bishops, cardinals, the canonisation of saints, [to] anything else that involves the Pope’s personal legislative or doctrinal authority.”