Pope Francis continued to improve from double pneumonia on Thursday, the Vatican reported, as he worked from his hospital room and visited his private chapel to pray. However, doctors stressed that he still needs several more days of clinical stability before they can reconsider their guarded prognosis.

Before he was hospitalized for double pneumonia, Pope Francis was battling firm resistance from some of his own cardinals about how to plug a widening gap in the Vatican's finances. Three days before his hospitalization,

The slight renal insufficiency the pope had in recent days subsided and a CAT scan of the chest showed a normal evolution of the pulmonary inflammatory picture.