After three days of treatment for bronchitis, Pope Francis is due to be discharged from the hospital on Saturday, April 1, and return to the Vatican where he will preside over Palm Mass the following day, marking the beginning of Easter celebrations.

On Friday, the 86-year-old Argentine Jesuit made a surprise visit to the pediatric oncology department of Rome's Gemelli Hospital, bringing the children chocolate eggs, rosaries and books. Francis also baptized a newborn a few weeks old. In a video and photos released by the Vatican, the pope is seen, smiling, leaning on a walker, writing on a paper and spraying the newborn's head with holy water.

Hours earlier, the Vatican confirmed that the pope would leave the hospital on Saturday and preside over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square, after two days of rumors in the media. This ceremony marks the beginning of Holy Week before Easter celebrations, the main highlight of the year for Catholics.

The health of the bishop of Rome, who had been hospitalized Wednesday after breathing difficulties, improved quickly and he had returned to work on Thursday.

Francis, who suffers from chronic health conditions and uses a wheelchair due to knee pain, stayed in the private apartment created for popes in 1981 on the 10th floor of Gemelli University Hospital.

"It is not possible for us to have Easter without the Pope"

"Maybe he did too much. But he's a strong man and I think he's going to get through it," Giuseppe, a 43-year-old tour guide, told AFP on Friday. "This is good news because (...) it is not possible for us to have Easter without the Pope."

The bishop of Rome had already been hospitalized for ten days at the Gemelli Hospital in July 2021 for a heavy colon operation. He admitted to having kept "sequelae" of anesthesia, which pushed him to rule out knee surgery so far.

The pain caused by this joint, which forced him to cancel several appointments in 2022 and postpone a trip to Africa, is at the heart of speculation about his possible renunciation.

The head of the Catholic Church has always left the door open to this possibility. His predecessor Benedict XVI resigned from office in 2013, taking the whole world by surprise.

After having evoked in July the possibility of "putting himself aside", he had judged in February that the "resignation" of a pope should "not become a fashion", ensuring that this hypothesis was "not on his agenda for the moment".

The pope is constantly monitored by a team of caregivers, both in the Vatican and during his travels abroad.

A precaution all the more necessary as he has behind him a heavy medical history: at 21, he almost died of pleurisy and had a lung partially removed.

With AFP

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