Pope Francis, whom the Vatican said he is responding well to the treatment for pneumonia, thanked his doctors and health workers on Sunday when he lost delivering a fourth consecutive prayer of Angelus in person.
The 88 -year -old, at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome since February 14, issued a written Angelus in which he thanked those who offer volunteers to help others, praising their “closeness and tenderness.”
“I also experienced the consideration of the service and the tenderness of care, in particular of the doctors and health workers, whom I thank from the bottom of my heart,” he said.
“We need this, the ‘miracle of tenderness’ that accompanies those in adversity, bringing some light to the night of pain,” he said in the text published by the Vatican.
The leader of the 1,400 million Catholics in the world has spent time in Gemelli before, especially for colon surgery in 2021 and a hernia operation in 2023.
However, this hospitalization has been more serious, since Francis suffered several respiratory crises, which caused fears that the path to recovery will be long or could force the old pontiff to resign.
On Saturday, the Vatican said that the Pope seemed finally responding to treatment and had seen “a gradual and light improvement”, marking several days without crisis.
Although the Pope has no fever, his doctors want to see more positive results “in the next few days” before giving a prognosis, said a night medical bulletin.
On Sunday, Vatican’s press office said the Pope was “stable.”
“Doctors confirmed that the situation remains the same as yesterday,” and the Pope had seen “slight improvements … in a complex general image,” he said.
The next bulletin is expected on Monday afternoon.
‘Given so much’
Francis has been alternating rest, prayer and work pieces when he feels up to it. On Sunday, the Italian cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of the Vatican, and Edgar Pena Parra, a Venezuelan archbishop who is also a senior Vatican official, received.
He continued his treatment, doing his physiotherapy and breathing exercises, said the press office.
Francis also followed the spiritual exercises that were carried out in the Vatican through a video link, although while he could see the participants, they could not see the Pope, he said.
The people who gathered in the Plaza de San Pedro on Sunday, where Francis would generally stop in a Vatican window to read the Angelus to the crowds below, said his presence was surprised.
“He is a wonderful person who has given so much and I hope he can return as soon as possible,” said Diana Desiderio, who offers himself as a volunteer in the Civil Protection agency in the Italian fish city.
She and her companions volunteers are praying so that Francis “returns to the window again and bring peace and serenity to all, because we need it,” he told him AFP.
The Pope ended with the Angelus with his traditional call to peace in conflicts, “in particular in tormented, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
He said he had “learned with concern about the resumption of violence in some areas of Syria: I hope they leave definitely, with full respect for all the ethnic and religious components of society.”
Catholics have also met at the Gemelli hospital to pray for Francis or leave flowers, candles and letters.
Giuseppe Antonio Perazzo, 74, was in the hospital for the second consecutive Sunday, dressed intelligently in a suit and ties the hope that the pontiff could appear in the window.
A sign that he supported the windows of the Pope’s rooms urged the Argentine pontiff, a patient notoriously stubborn, to “continue doing what doctors and nurses tell him to do.”
