A weak and frail Pope Francis has returned home to the Vatican from the hospital after surviving a five-week, life-threatening bout of pneumonia. He made a surprise stop at his favourite basilica on the way home before beginning two months of prescribed rest and recovery.
The motorcade carrying the 88-year-old pope entered the Perugino gate into Vatican City on Sunday morning. Francis was seen in the front passenger seat wearing nasal tubes to give him supplemental oxygen.
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During the trip home from Gemelli hospital, Francis took a slight detour to bring him to the St Mary Major basilica. This basilica houses his favourite icon of the Madonna, where he always goes to pray after a foreign visit. While he didn’t get out of the car, Francis handed a bouquet of flowers to the cardinal to place in front of the Salus populi Romani icon, a revered Byzantine-style painting on wood.
Francis is also returning to the Vatican in the throes of a Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration scheduled to draw more than 30 million pilgrims to Rome this year. The pope has already missed several Jubilee audiences and will presumably miss several more, but Vatican officials say his absence hasn’t significantly impacted the numbers of expected pilgrims arriving.
Only St John Paul II recorded a longer hospitalisation in 1981, when he spent 55 days at Gemelli for minor surgery and treatment of an infection.
