Convalescing pope says illness is universal as he misses another Angelus

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis, who is recovering from a life-threatening bout of pneumonia, urged Catholics Sunday to mark Lent as a “time of healing” as he missed his seventh consecutive Angelus prayer.

The 88-year-old head of the Catholic Church left Rome’s Gemelli hospital last Sunday after five weeks of treatment, returning to the Vatican for what his doctors said would be at least two months of convalescence.

Francis was again absent for this weekend’s Angelus, normally delivered at midday on Sunday from a window of the Apostolic Palace overlooking St Peter’s Square. The Vatican published the text instead, as it has since his hospitalisation on February 14. “Dearest friends, let us live this Lent as a time of healing,” Francis wrote, referring to 40 days before Easter, the holiest period in the Christian calendar. Easter Sunday this year falls on April 20.

“I too am experiencing it this way, in my soul and my body.” He added: “Frailty and illness are experiences we all have in common; all the more, however, we are brothers in the salvation Christ has given us.”

The Vatican said Friday the pope was showing “slight improvements”, with his voice -- strained and weak following his double pneumonia -- reported to be stronger. Doctors said Francis almost died twice during his hospitalisation, the longest and most fraught of his 12 years as head of the Church.

Millions of Catholics are visiting Rome and the Vatican for the 2025 papal Jubilee, a year of religious celebrations, and crowds gathered Sunday in St Peter’s Square despite the pope’s absence.