Pope Francis -- bundled in a long, white coat and battling a hoarse voice -- presided over Mass in St. Peter's Square before tens of thousands of faithful on Palm Sunday, a day after he left a Rome hospital where he was treated for bronchitis.
Bundled in a long, white coat and battling a hoarse voice, Pope Francis presided over Mass in St. Peter's Square before tens of thousands of faithful on Palm Sunday, a day after he left a Rome hospital where he was treated for bronchitis.
Francis, 86, received antibiotics administered intravenously during his three-day stay. He last previous appearance in St. Peter's Square saw him conduct his his regular Wednesday public audience. He was taken to Rome's Gemelli Polyclinic that same day after feeling ill. Deviating from his prepared speech, Francis spoke about a homeless German man who recently died, "alone, abandoned," under the colonnade circling St. Peter's Square, where homeless persons often sleep.Concern over abandonment threaded through his homily. "Entire peoples are exploited and abandoned; the poor live on our streets and we look the other way; migrants are no longer faces but numbers; prisoners are disowned, people written off as problems," Francis said.
At the end of Mass, Francis greeted the Romans, tourists and pilgrims who had flocked to the square, noting that many in the crowd of 60,000 had come from afar.
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