A weak and frail Pope Fran­cis re­turned home to the Vat­i­can from the hos­pi­tal on Sun­day af­ter sur­viv­ing a five-week, life-threat­en­ing bout of pneu­mo­nia, mak­ing a sur­prise stop at his favourite basil­i­ca on the way home be­fore be­gin­ning two months of pre­scribed rest and re­cov­ery.

The mo­tor­cade car­ry­ing the 88-year-old pope en­tered the Pe­rug­i­no gate in­to Vat­i­can City, and Fran­cis was seen in the front pas­sen­ger seat wear­ing nasal tubes to give him sup­ple­men­tal oxy­gen.

Dur­ing the trip home from Gemel­li hos­pi­tal, Fran­cis took a slight de­tour to bring him to the St. Mary Ma­jor basil­i­ca, where his favourite icon of the Madon­na is lo­cat­ed and where he al­ways goes to pray af­ter a for­eign vis­it. Fran­cis didn’t get out of the car, but hand­ed a bou­quet of flow­ers to the car­di­nal to place in front of the Salus pop­uli Ro­mani icon, a Byzan­tine-style paint­ing on wood that is revered by Ro­mans.

Be­fore leav­ing the hos­pi­tal, Fran­cis gave a thumbs up and ac­knowl­edged the crowd af­ter he was wheeled out on­to the bal­cony over­look­ing the main en­try. Hun­dreds of peo­ple had gath­ered on a bril­liant Sun­day morn­ing to say good­bye.

“I see this woman with the yel­low flow­ers. Bra­va!” a tired and bloat­ed-look­ing Fran­cis said. He gave a weak sign of the cross be­fore be­ing wheeled back in­side.

Chants of “Vi­va il pa­pa!” and “Pa­pa Francesco” erupt­ed from the crowd, which in­clud­ed pa­tients who had been wheeled out­side just to catch his brief ap­pear­ance.

Doc­tors, who an­nounced his planned re­lease at a Sat­ur­day evening news con­fer­ence, said he needs two months of rest and con­va­les­cence, dur­ing which he should re­frain from meet­ing with big groups of peo­ple or ex­ert­ing him­self. But they said even­tu­al­ly he should be able to re­sume all his nor­mal ac­tiv­i­ties.

His re­turn home, af­ter the longest hos­pi­tal­iza­tion of his 12-year pa­pa­cy and the sec­ond-longest in re­cent pa­pal his­to­ry, brought tan­gi­ble re­lief to the Vat­i­can and Catholic faith­ful who have been anx­ious­ly fol­low­ing 38 days of med­ical ups and downs and won­der­ing if Fran­cis would make it.

“To­day I feel a great joy,” said Dr. Rossel­la Rus­so­man­do, a doc­tor from Saler­no who didn’t treat Fran­cis but was at Gemel­li on Sun­day. “It is the demon­stra­tion that all our prayers, all the rosary prayers from all over the world, brought this grace.”

Pope is hap­py to go home

At the Vat­i­can Sun­day, pil­grims flocked as they have all year to St. Pe­ter’s Basil­i­ca to par­tic­i­pate in the 2025 Holy Year. They swarmed St. Pe­ter’s Square and pro­gressed through the Holy Door in groups, while big TV screens in the square were turned on to broad­cast Fran­cis’ hos­pi­tal greet­ing live.

No spe­cial arrange­ments have been made at the Do­mus San­ta Mar­ta, the Vat­i­can ho­tel next to the basil­i­ca where Fran­cis lives in a two-room suite on the sec­ond floor. Fran­cis will have ac­cess to sup­ple­men­tal oxy­gen and 24-hour med­ical care as need­ed, though his per­son­al physi­cian, Dr. Lui­gi Car­bone, said he hoped Fran­cis would pro­gres­sive­ly need less and less as­sis­tance breath­ing as his lungs re­cov­er.

While the pneu­mo­nia in­fec­tion has been suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed, Fran­cis will con­tin­ue to take oral med­ica­tion for quite some time to treat the fun­gal in­fec­tion in his lungs and con­tin­ue his res­pi­ra­to­ry and phys­i­cal phys­io­ther­a­py.

“For three or four days he’s been ask­ing when he can go home, so he’s very hap­py,” Car­bone said.

Two life-threat­en­ing crises

The Ar­gen­tine pope, who has chron­ic lung dis­ease and had part of one lung re­moved as a young man, was ad­mit­ted to Gemel­li on Feb. 14 af­ter a bout of bron­chi­tis wors­ened.

Doc­tors first di­ag­nosed a com­plex bac­te­r­i­al, vi­ral and fun­gal res­pi­ra­to­ry tract in­fec­tion and soon there­after, pneu­mo­nia in both lungs. Blood tests showed signs of anaemia, low blood platelets and the on­set of kid­ney fail­ure, all of which lat­er re­solved af­ter two blood trans­fu­sions.

The most se­ri­ous set­backs be­gan on Feb. 28, when Fran­cis ex­pe­ri­enced an acute cough­ing fit and in­haled vom­it, re­quir­ing the use of a non­in­va­sive me­chan­i­cal ven­ti­la­tion mask to help him breathe. He suf­fered two more res­pi­ra­to­ry crises a few days lat­er, which re­quired doc­tors to man­u­al­ly as­pi­rate “co­pi­ous” amounts of mu­cus from his lungs, at which point he be­gan sleep­ing with the ven­ti­la­tion mask at night to help his lungs clear the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of flu­ids.

He was nev­er in­tu­bat­ed and at no point lost con­scious­ness. Doc­tors re­port­ed he al­ways re­mained alert and co­op­er­a­tive, though they say he has prob­a­bly lost a bit of weight giv­en a nat­ur­al loss of ap­petite.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly yes, there was a mo­ment when many were say­ing that he might not make it. And it was painful for us,” said Mario Bal­samo, the own­er of cof­fee shop in front of Gemel­li. “In­stead, to­day with the dis­charge, we are very hap­py that he is well and we hope he will re­cov­er soon and will re­cov­er his strength.”

‘I’m still alive!’

Dr. Ser­gio Al­fieri, the med­ical and sur­gi­cal chief at Gemel­li who co­or­di­nat­ed Fran­cis’ med­ical team, stressed that not all pa­tients who de­vel­op such a se­vere case of dou­ble pneu­mo­nia sur­vive, much less are re­leased from the hos­pi­tal. He said Fran­cis’ life was at risk twice, dur­ing the two acute res­pi­ra­to­ry crises, and that the pope at the time un­der­stand­ably lost his typ­i­cal good sense of hu­mour.

“But one morn­ing we went to lis­ten to his lungs and we asked him how he was do­ing. When he replied, ‘I’m still alive,’ we knew he was OK and had got­ten his good hu­mour back,” he said.

Al­fieri con­firmed that Fran­cis was still hav­ing trou­ble speak­ing due to the dam­age to his lungs and res­pi­ra­to­ry mus­cles. But he said such prob­lems were nor­mal, es­pe­cial­ly in old­er pa­tients, and pre­dict­ed his voice would even­tu­al­ly re­turn to nor­mal.

No con­firmed ap­point­ments for now

The Vat­i­can spokesman, Mat­teo Bruni, de­clined to con­firm any up­com­ing events, in­clud­ing a sched­uled au­di­ence on April 8 with King Charles III or Fran­cis’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in East­er ser­vices at the end of the month. But Car­bone said he hoped Fran­cis might be well enough to trav­el to Turkey at the end of May to par­tic­i­pate in an im­por­tant ec­u­meni­cal an­niver­sary.

Fran­cis is al­so re­turn­ing to the Vat­i­can in the throes of a Holy Year, the once-every-quar­ter-cen­tu­ry cel­e­bra­tion sched­uled to draw more than 30 mil­lion pil­grims to Rome this year. The pope has al­ready missed sev­er­al Ju­bilee au­di­ences and will pre­sum­ably miss sev­er­al more, but Vat­i­can of­fi­cials say his ab­sence hasn’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed the num­bers of ex­pect­ed pil­grims ar­riv­ing.

On­ly St. John Paul II record­ed a longer hos­pi­tal­iza­tion in 1981, when he spent 55 days at Gemel­li for mi­nor surgery and treat­ment of an in­fec­tion.

VAT­I­CAN CITY (AP) —