Chicago Cardinal 'Well' After Surgery

Chicago Cardinal 'Well' After Surgery
Friday July 28, 2006 1:01 AM
By MEGAN REICHGOTT

Associated Press Writer

MAYWOOD, Ill. (AP) - Cardinal Francis George, spiritual leader to 2.4 million Roman Catholics as head of the Archdiocese of Chicago, had his cancerous bladder removed Thursday and came through the surgery ``very well,'' doctors said.

``Things went very, very smoothly,'' Dr. Robert Flanigan said after the five-hour operation at Loyola University Medical Center.

Flanigan said George asked him how the surgery had gone and told him he had not felt any discomfort.

Doctors said tests would be conducted to determine how far advanced the cancer was.

``I fully expect that he will come to a full recovery and resume his schedule,'' said Dr. Myles Sheehan, a priest and George's personal physician.

Doctors said they were making a ``neobladder'' to replace the cardinal's bladder but declined to elaborate, saying George did not want them to discuss the issue yet.

George, 69, will probably remain in the hospital for about seven days, Flanigan said.

At Holy Name Cathedral on Chicago's North Side, a few hundred people prayed at a midday Mass for George and for Maggie Daley, Mayor Richard M. Daley's wife, who underwent a procedure Thursday to remove a residual tumor from her right breast.

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