ROME — Pope Francis was in critical but stable condition Tuesday as he worked from the hospital while battling double pneumonia, and the Vatican announced some major governing decisions that suggest he is getting essential work done and looking ahead.

The Vatican’s evening update said the 88-year-old pope had had no new respiratory crises and that his blood parameters were stable. He underwent a follow-up CAT scan Tuesday evening to check the lung infection, but no results were provided. Doctors said his prognosis remained guarded.

“In the morning, after receiving the Eucharist, he resumed work activities,” the Vatican statement said.

Decisions on saints and a formal meeting of cardinals

The Vatican’s Tuesday noon bulletin contained a series of significant decisions Francis had taken, most importantly that he had met on Monday with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the Vatican “substitute” or chief of staff.

It was the first known time the pope had met with Parolin, who is essentially the Vatican prime minister, since his Feb. 14 hospitalization and the first outsider known to have called on Francis since Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni visited Feb. 19.

During the audience, Francis approved decrees for two new saints and five people for beatification — the first step toward possible sainthood. Francis also convened a consistory, or a formal meeting of cardinals, to set the dates for the future canonizations.

Francis regularly approves decrees from the Vatican’s saint-making office when he is at the Vatican, albeit during audiences with the head of the office, not Parolin. A consistory is a necessary ceremonial step in that saint-making process.

It wasn’t clear, though, why there was such urgency to approve the decrees while the pope was in critical condition, when some of the new proposed saints have been waiting years if not decades for their causes to advance.

The signing of the decrees did serve to show the pope fully in charge and provided a public way to announce Parolin’s audience. But it also raised some questions.

It was also at a banal consistory to set dates for canonizations on Feb. 11, 2013, that Pope Benedict XVI announced, in Latin, that he would resign because he couldn’t keep up with the rigors of the papacy.

Francis has said he, too, would consider resigning after Benedict “opened the door” and became the first pope in 600 years to retire.

Giovanna Chirri, the reporter for the Italian news agency ANSA who was covering the consistory that day and broke the story because she understood Latin, said that she didn’t think Francis would follow in Benedict’s footsteps, “even if some would want it.”

“I could be wrong, but I hope not,” she said. “As long as he’s alive, the world and the church need him.”

Francis’ English biographer, Austen Ivereigh, said that it was possible, and that all that matters is that Francis be “wholly free to make the right decision.”