The Rev. Peter M. Donohue, Villanova University’s president and friend of Pope Leo XIV, will present the school’s inaugural sustainability medal at Castel Gandolfo, the scenic hilltop town in Italy that serves as the pope’s summer residence.
The 71-year-old pontiff had been scheduled to present the medal, which is named after him, but he checked into a hospital in Rome Tuesday morning for surgery this afternoon to remove a small nodule from his lung.
During his regular Sunday address in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, the pope said that doctors had detected a nodule “at a very early stage” that was “well localized.” It’s not clear when he will have the surgery.
Leo arrived at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, walking in and waving as dozens of well-wishers waited at the main entrance. The Vatican says he is expected to be hospitalized for at least a week, with all his public appearances canceled until Oct. 20.
“These are things that can be treated very well, if the words he used reflect the clinical situation,” said Dr. Lorenzo Spaggiari, director of thoracic surgery at the European Institute of Oncology, or EIO, in Milan, who is not involved in the pope’s care but knows the team at Gemelli.
A churchman who saw Leo on Monday, Tokyo Cardinal Kikuchi Tsutomu, said Leo told him he felt fine and decided to have the surgery immediately so that he wouldn’t have to alter his upcoming travel plans to Latin America.
At Castel Gandolfo, around 350 people are attending the 2026 International Sustainability Conference there, 90 of them from Villanova, to see the Pope Leo XIV Sustainability Medal be awarded 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.
Cardinal Fabio Baggio, director general of the Laudato Si’ Centre for Higher Education, will give the welcoming address, a Villanova spokesperson said. Donohue will hand out the award. Prayers for Pope Leo’s health continued at the conference.
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.
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.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.