Pope Francis presided over the Palm Sunday mass of the Catholic Church and read the homily in Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican, despite having spent three days during the week admitted to a hospital in Rome with a picture of bronchitis.
Thousands of people cheered the Argentine pope, 86, with palm and olive branches as he entered the square seated in an open-top vehicle before beginning the mass, which lasted two hours.
Wearing a white coat, Francisco got out of the car on his own and walked with the help of a cane to the dais, where he blessed the faithful in the ceremony that commemorates the entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem.
The pope, who was discharged on Saturday, later observed the mass, which was officiated by Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, also from Argentina, and then read the homily.
In a gruff voice, Francisco, who sounded firm at the start of the ceremony but later resented it, read a 15-minute speech, sometimes adding off-the-cuff comments to emphasize something or punctuating his words with hand gestures.
“I thank you for your participation and also for your prayers, which have intensified in recent days,” he said at the end of the service, to loud applause from the crowd.
The homily focused on moments when people feel “extreme pain, love that fails or feels rejected or betrayed.” He mentioned “children who find themselves rejected or aborted,” failed marriages, and “forms of social exclusion, injustice and oppression (and) the loneliness of disease.”
Departing from the prepared speech, Francis spoke about a homeless German man who died “alone, abandoned” under the colonnade that surrounds St. Peter’s Square, where the homeless often sleep.
“I also need Jesus to caress me,” he said.
Concern over abandonment marked his homily. “Entire towns are exploited and abandoned, the poor live in our streets and we look the other way. Migrants are no longer faces, but numbers, prisoners are disinherited, people are dismissed as problems,” the Pope said.
He also referred to “young people who feel a great emptiness inside without anyone really listening to their cry of pain” and who “find no other way than suicide”.
Francis said Holy Week would include “more intense prayers” for “the martyred Ukrainian people.” In an allusion to Russia’s war in Ukraine, he commented that the olive branches raised by Catholics on Palm Sunday are symbols of Jesus’ peace.
After the mass, the cardinals greeted Francis one by one, some shaking his hand or chatting briefly with him.
Finally, he climbed back into the open popemobile to move around the square and smiled at the faithful, many of whom raised the flags of their countries.
On Holy Thursday, the pope will celebrate mass at a youth prison in Rome, but it is not yet clear if he will take part in the Good Friday Stations of the Cross, the procession around the Roman Colosseum.
[Con información de AP, AFP y Reuters]