Pope Discharged After Over Five Weeks In Hospital [PHOTOS]

The 88-year-old Pope Francis was seen in public for the first time since his admission on February 14 when he welcomed and thanked the faithful from the balcony of Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Sunday.

“Thank you, everyone,” a weak-sounding Francis said into a microphone as he sat in a wheelchair, waving gently to hundreds of people gathered below and doing the occasional thumbs-up sign.

“I can see that woman with yellow flowers, well done,” he said with a small smile, to laughter from the crowd.

The head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, who has spent over five weeks in hospital battling pneumonia, was on the balcony for two minutes then was discharged immediately.

 

He left by car, waving from the closed window of the front seat as he drove past journalists, and could be seen wearing a cannula, a plastic tube tucked into his nostrils that delivers oxygen.

 

Francis looked tired and thinner than usual. Doctors have said that his health has improved sufficiently for him to go home but that he still faces a long recovery of at least two months.