Pope makes surprise appearance in St Peter's Square: ‘I feel God's guiding hand in my convalescence’.

Francis among those taking part in the Jubilee of the Sick, in a wheelchair and with oxygen: ‘I wish everyone a good Sunday! Thank you so much’. During the Angelus another appeal: ‘Let there be silence among the weapons, let dialogue resume’. He prayed for peace in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and other places of conflict, where ‘civilian victims, including many children’ are present. He thanked healthcare workers and invited the faithful to trust in God, who ‘does not abandon’ even in sickness.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - This morning Pope Francis made a surprise appearance in St Peter's Square, at the end of the Jubilee celebration for the sick and the world of healthcare. He was greeted by the amazement of the approximately 20,000 people - patients, healthcare personnel, volunteers - who attended the mass celebrated by Msgr. Rino Fisichella.

The Pope thus joined today's pilgrimage - also a sick person, in a wheelchair and with nasal oxygen tubes - receiving the sacrament of reconciliation and passing through the Holy Door. ‘I wish everyone a good Sunday! Thank you very much’, were the few words he spoke.

The text of the Angelus was instead published in written form, as has been the case for the last eight weeks. Commenting on today's Gospel (Jn 8:1-11), in which Jesus saves the woman ‘caught in adultery’ by passing his finger over the ‘dust’ in which she had ‘fallen’, he said: ‘It is the “finger of God” that saves his children’. ‘In my convalescence I feel the ‘finger of God’ and experience his caring caress,’ says Bergoglio.

‘I ask the Lord that this touch of his love may reach those who suffer and encourage those who take care of them.’ His thoughts are therefore with healthcare workers, who ‘are not always helped to work in suitable conditions and, at times, are even the victims of aggression’, he added. ‘I hope that the necessary resources are invested in treatment and research, so that healthcare systems are inclusive and attentive to the most fragile and the poorest’.

Also during the Angelus, Pope Francis thanked the inmates of the Rebibbia women's prison (Rome), ‘for the card they sent me’, he said. ‘I pray for them and their families’. And the prayer for peace is incessant: ‘May the weapons fall silent and dialogue resume; may all the hostages be freed and the population be helped’.

‘In battered Ukraine, hit by attacks that cause many civilian victims, including many children. And the same happens in Gaza, where people are reduced to living in unimaginable conditions, without a roof over their heads, without food, without clean water’. Peace is being called for in the Middle East, in Sudan and South Sudan, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Myanmar, ‘hard hit by an earthquake’, and in Haiti, ‘where violence is raging, and a few days ago two nuns were killed’, said the pontiff.

After Pope Francis appeared in St Peter's Square, a message was read out to those present: ‘His Holiness Pope Francis sends his affectionate greetings to all those who have taken part in this celebration and he warmly thanks them for their prayers for his health. Hoping that the Jubilee pilgrimage will be fruitful, he imparts his apostolic blessing to them, extending it to their loved ones, to the sick and the suffering, as well as to all the faithful gathered today’.

In the homily, read by Msgr. Rino Fisichella, Pope Francis writes: ‘Today the liturgy invites us to renew, on our Lenten journey, our trust in God, who is always present at our side to save us’.

And addressing the participants in the Jubilee for the Sick and the World of Health Care: ‘Illness is one of the most difficult and harsh trials of life, in which we experience first-hand how fragile we are - he added -. It can make us feel like the people in exile, or like the woman in the Gospel: without hope for the future’.

But it is not so. ‘Even in these moments, God does not leave us alone and, if we surrender ourselves to Him’. In his ‘loving trust’, ‘he involves us so that we can in turn become, for one another, “angels”, messengers of his presence’.

And speaking to ‘doctors, nurses and healthcare personnel’, he continues: ‘Allow the presence of the sick to enter your existence as a gift, to heal your hearts, purifying you from everything that is not charity’.

Speaking to the sick: ‘At this moment in my life I share a lot: the experience of infirmity, of feeling weak, of depending on others in many things, of needing support’. This is not ‘easy’, but ‘it is a school where we learn every day to love and to let ourselves be loved, without demanding and without rejecting, without regretting and without despairing’, adds Pope Francis.