Pope Francis is discharged and says: “I’m still alive”

Pope Francis was discharged this Saturday, after three days in hospital with bronchitis, and sent a message as he left the Gemelli hospital in Rome: “I’m still alive”. Hospitalized on Wednesday, the pontiff left the place around 10:20 am local (6:20 am in Brasilia) in the front passenger seat of a small car, escorted by the police and with a security scheme.

On leaving the hospital, the religious leader stopped in front of a group of faithful, spectators and journalists who greeted him and to whom he told how he has lived these days in which the world has followed his recovery from the bronchitis that took him to the hospital. “I only felt discomfort and I wasn’t afraid, I’m still alive,” the pope insisted to journalists, getting out of the vehicle on the side of the road, helped by a cane and with a smile on his face.

The pontiff dedicated words of thanks to the doctors and nurses who attended him in recent days at the hospital, where he was already in July 2021 for intestinal surgery, and also praised the work of the journalists who followed his state of health. During these days of hospitalization and convalescence, in an apartment for the exclusive use of the pontiffs since the time of John Paul II, Francis read the newspapers, prayed in the chapel and the day before yesterday he had pizza for dinner with the medical team and his collaborators.

On Friday, Francis visited children at the neurosurgery and oncology unit, to whom he brought Easter eggs and other gifts, and even baptized one of them, little Michelangelo, a moment captured by Vatican cameras that showed the pope was walking and in apparent good health. “The most beautiful thing of these days has been the visit to the children”, acknowledged the pontiff as he left.

As the pope himself announced on camera, he will be present tomorrow at the Palm Sunday mass in St. Peter’s Square, which opens the rites of Holy Week, although the main celebrant is expected to be Cardinal Leonardo Sandri.