Rudy Giuliani Beats the Odds: Out of ICU Three Days After Last Rites

When a priest showed up to administer last rites on Monday, May 4, things looked dire for Rudy Giuliani. The 81-year-old former New York City mayor had been hospitalized in critical condition just days earlier with pneumonia, his health deteriorating so rapidly that his medical team prepared for the worst. By Wednesday, May 6, though, he was out of the ICU—a turn his doctor described in almost spiritual terms.

Dr. Maria Ryan, Giuliani’s physician, told Fox News the recovery felt miraculous.“He’s a fighter—the way he was yesterday in such a critical condition, he did have a priest come anoint him. And all the prayers from around—it’s like a miracle. This guy’s got [nine] lives…today he’s doing much better,”she explained. His spokesperson, Ted Goodman, confirmed the move out of intensive care and echoed the sentiment, crediting prayer as a driving force in the turnaround.“The power of prayer is working. The mayor feels it. We feel it,”Goodman stated.

The pneumonia wasn’t random bad luck. According to Goodman, Giuliani’s underlying condition—restrictive airway disease, diagnosed after his exposure during the September 11, 2001 terror attacks—made him vulnerable. On that day in 2001, when Giuliani served as mayor, he traveled throughout New York City to assess the scale of the World Trade Center collapse. That decades-old health complication meant when the virus hit, it“quickly overwhelmed his body, requiring mechanical ventilation to maintain adequate oxygen and stabilize his condition,”the spokesperson said.

This isn’t Giuliani’s first health scare in recent memory. Back in August 2025, he was hospitalized after a motor vehicle accident in New Hampshire. He’d been helping a domestic violence victim when his car was struck from behind at high speed, leaving him with a fractured thoracic vertebrae, multiple lacerations and contusions, and injuries to his left arm and lower leg. Two weeks later, he was photographed in a full chest brace at a 9/11 memorial event at One World Trade Center.

Now recovering from pneumonia, Goodman framed Giuliani’s latest battle as consistent with his character:“Mayor Giuliani—the man who took down the Mafia, saved New York City, and ran toward the towers on September 11th—is the same fighter he’s always been, and he’s winning this fight.”Whether that narrative resonates depends on your view of his political legacy, but medically speaking, being discharged from intensive care after receiving last rites is, by any measure, a significant recovery.