ROME, Oct. 14 -- Pope Leo XIV asked for dinner. That detail, relayed Tuesday night by the Vatican's press director, was the first sign that the 71-year-old pontiff had come through an operation that ended with a diagnosis the Holy See had not used in public before: lung cancer.

Surgeons at Rome's Agostino Gemelli University Hospital removed the lower lobe of his right lung on Tuesday afternoon, according to a statement from Dr. Luigi Carbone and Professor Stefano Margaritora released through the Holy See Press Office. "An intraoperative histological examination confirmed the diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma, as suspected from the preoperative examinations," the doctors said.

Until then the Vatican had described only a "small, localized ...