Pope Francis surprisingly shows up on St. Peter’s Square

The sick Pope Francis surprisingly showed himself publicly on Sunday. At the end of a mass in front of 20,000 believers, the head of the Catholic Church in a wheelchair was driven on St. Peter’s Square. « Have a nice Sunday for everyone. Thank you, » said Francis with audible voice in Italian. In the pictures and film recordings it was also seen that oxygen was fed into his nose through cannulas

Archbishop Rino Fisichella had previously read the Pope’s sermon. In it, the head of the Catholic Church described illness as a kind of school. « With you, dear sick brothers and sisters, I share a lot at this moment of my life: the experience of the disease to feel weak, to be dependent on others, need support in many things. It is not always easy, but it is a school in which we learn to love and love every day, » he said, according to official German translation.

Delayed from the hospital two weeks ago

The 88-year-old, who suffered from a serious pneumonia, had returned to the Vatican two weeks after 38 days of inpatient treatment in a clinic in Rome. However, he has to continue to spare himself and has hardly been seen so far.

The trade fair as part of the Holy Year 2025 was specifically dedicated to the sick. In a text sent by the Holy Chair in writing, the Pope also recalled the violence that doctors and nursing staff often had to suffer. He called for peace in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Haiti.

The jubilee year 2025 began opening the holy gate in St. Peter’s Basilica on December 24, 2024. Holy years are celebrated every 25 years, but there are also extraordinary sacred years in between, as last in 2015/16. Fisichella, who led the Sunday mass as a celebrant, is a pro-prefect (head) of the dicasterium for evangelization. Dicasteries are facilities of the Roman Curia that are comparable to the departments within a government.