Who runs the Vatican while the pope is hospitalized?
"The pope's authority is supreme, full and universal," said canon lawyer Nicholas Cafardi. There's nobody above him." THE VATICAN CURIA  Francis may be in charge, but he already delegates the day-to-day running of the Vatican and church to a team of officials who operate whether he is in the Apostolic Palace or not, and whether he is conscious or not. Chief among them is the secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. In a sign that Francis' hospitalization foresaw no change to the governance of the church, Parolin wasn't even in the Vatican during Francis' three-hour scheduled surgery. He was in Strasbourg, France, to commemorate the 1,300th anniversary of the death of the patron saint of Alsasce. Other Vatican functions are proceeding normally. Its daily noon bulletin came out again Tuesday with the names of new bishops appointed by the pope in Nicaragua, Nigeria and Britain. They presumably were approved ahead of time, although Francis could sign decrees and handle other matters of importance from his hospital bed, as St. John Paul II was known to have done during his many hospitalizations.