Pope Francis returns to the Vatican: “I was not afraid”

breaking latest news – Ore 11,30: Pope francesco cross the Porta del Perugino, which is the threshold of the house. He gets out of the car, thanks the agents who escorted him on his tour through the streets of Rome. The Gemelli is far beyond the handful of kilometers that physically divide it from Santa Marta. His second hospitalization at the Gemelli Polyclinicafter that of 2021, it is water under the bridge and he does everything to underline it.

That’s why, when it’s time to leave the hospital where he had dragged him despite a full-blown bronchitis, he stops. He stops with a couple of parents who have lost their son during the night, and prays with them; he stops in front of the journalists stationed for hours at the entrance, on the widening that leads to the busy via della Pineta Sacchetti.

The voice is indeed a bit low, and logic says that the antibiotic treatments could continue because they always take a few days, but the intensity is all in the words he chooses: “I was not afraid, I’m still alive“; “I felt like a malaise, like when one has a stomach ache” but death (and here it is no coincidence that he mentions a “person older than me”) he has not seen its face. He even signs the cast of a child. As if to say: you stop but then you start again.

Then the small procession whizzes by, not much blue and quite metallic gray, made up of sedans and station wagons revisited according to the canons of this decade. The Pope descends towards the heart of the city, and some traffic problems cannot be avoided, also because he does not immediately head towards Santa Marta. Go through the centre, rather; the destination is Santa Maria Maggiore, and the icon of the Salus Populi Romani: the one where he goes to pray before leaving on a journey, and when he returns. In short, this too was a journey, and the health of the people of Rome is also that of its bishop.

Now everything is in the past, we have to look to the future and it’s not just because the chest pain of the other day was enough to make the old stories of future conclaves and current councils circulate again. Francesco is in a hurry to resume normal activityand it can be understood from many things.
It is then made known that next week’s programs will respect the normal procedures and the usual deadlines, and it is Holy Week.

It is announced that on Holy Thursday in the morning he will be busy with the Chrism Mass, and in the afternoon he will go to the juvenile prison of Casal del Marmo for the Mass in Coena Domini, with the rite of foot washing

But even before that, tomorrow, Bergoglio will be outside the Basilica for the Mass of the Palm Sunday. Indeed, in all likelihood before the mass he will already be at the Obelisk blessing the olive branches.

In short, the appointments are more than confirmed. To understand the pace, look at last year’s schedule. Even the Via Crucis on Friday has been confirmed, the one that twelve months ago sparked the controversy over the decision to have two girls, one Ukrainian and the second Russian, carry the cross.

He will attend the rites, he will preside and celebrate masses, with the presence of a celebrant at the altar. In the meantime he appoints a woman to lead the prestigious Academy of Social Sciences, announces a round of appointments in some European and non-European dioceses, in short, flaunts a return to normality.
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More: there has never been the exceptionality. To those who ask him at the moment to pass under the Porta del Perugino, if he confirms the trip to Hungary at the end of the month he answers yes without hesitation. If you then add a request for clarification on the nature of the health problems, he replies that he doesn’t even understand it. Ask the doctors. In other words: it was never my business. The journey continues, after the visit to the Madonna who protects the health and salvation of the people of Rome and of the one who is its bishop

Thank you all for your closeness and prayers. I entrust the sick to Mary, especially the little ones like those I met in the oncology department of the Gemelli. We pray for those who suffer the loss of loved ones and for those who work in the hospital, heroism is needed. I admire them. pic.twitter.com/JQpiapiULd

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex_it) April 1, 2023

That is why, before leaving the Gemelli, Pope Francis does not fail to underline the need for good information. He did it even before he was forced into this unexpected and unwanted break: in an interview with an Argentine newspaper in which he stigmatizes the political maneuvers triggered and aided by an initial bad press campaign that denigrates, destroys and prepares the ground, Today instead he compliments the “media that report precise things, to avoid fantasies”. Precisely those for which, on the streets of Rome, Bergoglio manifests his presence. We’ll be fine here.