Posted October 14, 2026
Pope Leo XIV spent a peaceful night at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome after undergoing surgery for lung cancer, the Vatican said this morning. The seventy-one-year-old pontiff was diagnosed Tuesday with adenocarcinoma after doctors removed the lower lobe of his right lung.
The Vatican has not disclosed the size of the tumor or whether the disease had spread. The pope is expected to remain in the hospital for about a week; his public engagements have been cancelled until October 20.
Leo is known for an active and healthy lifestyle that includes swimming and tennis. He has never smoked. The New York Times quotes one of his biographers: “Leo has the profile of someone who takes care of himself. So that has added to the shock.”
His diagnosis shows that innocent suffering finds us all, whatever our relationship with God. The natural disasters we began discussing yesterday are obvious examples. When hurricanes and earthquakes strike, it is only natural to question whether the God we trust is truly all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving.
As we noted, some theologians say that God’s sovereignty requires him to directly control every event in nature. I disagreed, pointing to the universal laws of nature I believe he also created and uses to operate his universe. However, I also disagreed with those who say he is bound by these laws and thus does not intervene in his creation. The Bible reports numerous times when he acts in the world in ways we consider miraculous.
So, if God only intervenes in nature on occasion, how do we know when an event constitutes such a sovereign act? When Jonah fled his call to go to Nineveh, “the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea” (Jonah 1:4). When Jonah’s fellow sailors then threw him into the ocean at his request, “the sea ceased from its raging” (v. 15).
Did God therefore cause Hurricanes Isaias and Simon? What about the Great Galveston Hurricane, which killed eight thousand people, or the devastation of Hurricane Katrina?
We similarly read in Acts 16 that Paul and Silas were singing hymns at midnight in a Philippian jail when “suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken” (v. 26). Did God therefore cause last Friday’s earthquakes in Panama? What about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that killed more than three thousand people?
Let’s sketch what the Bible clearly teaches regarding God’s sovereignty:
However, we must balance our Father’s omnipotent sovereignty with his omnibenevolent mercy, remembering that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and that he therefore loves each of us as much as he loves his own Son (John 17:23, 26). His character requires him to act only for our good.
As a result, when God causes natural disasters in the Bible, he also reveals the larger purpose motivating his intervention, from Noah’s Flood to his judgments in Revelation 6, 8–9, 11, 16, and 18.
It is also the case that God employs natural disasters in response to specific sins and sinners, from the corruption that led to the Flood (Genesis 6:1–7) to Pharaoh’s persecution of the Israelites to those in Revelation 16 who “cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues” (v. 9) and “did not repent of their deeds” (v. 11).
Now let’s apply this discussion to the question at hand.
I know of no sins committed by residents of Panama or the US Gulf Coast that would prompt God to cause last week’s earthquakes or hurricanes. Millions of people are affected by natural disasters each year. I view these calamities as consequences of the Fall, the result of which is that “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22). I see deaths that result from our fallen world in the same way: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).
But I would add that God still intervenes in our broken world to reverse the Fall, healing bodies and altering circumstances affected by the introduction of sin into his perfect creation. One day we will need no more miraculous help, since one day “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
In the meantime, we can respond to natural disasters in five biblical ways:
Whatever our circumstances and challenges today, if we submit our lives to our Father’s sovereignty, we will agree with Chuck Swindoll:
“Anything under God’s control is never out of control.”
Are you “under God’s control” today?
“God’s will is what you would want for yourself if you knew enough to want it.” —David Peterson
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