Pope Francis waves from a window of the Gemelli hospital before being discharged following a five-week hospitalization for pneumonia, in Rome on March 23, 2025. Pope Francis is to leave the hospital today and return to his residence in the Vatican, where he is to spend “at least two months” recovering, one of his doctors announced during a press conference on March 22, 2025. (Photo by Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP)
ROME, Italy — Pope Francis greeted and thanked the faithful from a balcony of Rome’s Gemelli Hospital Sunday, the first time the 88-year-old has been seen in public since his admission on February 14.
“Thank you, everyone,” a weak-sounding Francis said into a microphone, as he sat in a wheelchair waving gently to hundreds of people gathered below, and doing the occasional thumbs-up sign.
“I can see that woman with yellow flowers, well done,” he said with a small smile, to laughter from the crowd.
The head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, who has spent over five weeks in hospital battling pneumonia, was on the balcony for two minutes then was discharged immediately.
He left by car, waving from the closed window of the front seat as he drove past journalists, and could be seen wearing a cannula — a plastic tube tucked into his nostrils that delivers oxygen.
Francis looked tired and thinner than usual. Doctors have said that his health has improved sufficiently for him to go home, but that he still faces a long recovery of at least two months.
