The 88-year-old pontiff has been hospitalized for six weeks with pneumonia in both lungs. He will need to rest in the Vatican for at least two months, his doctors said.
Pope Francis’s condition has improved enough that he will be discharged from a hospital in Rome on Sunday and sent to recover in the Vatican for at least two months, his doctors said on Saturday evening.
On Sunday, Francis plans to make his first public appearance since he was hospitalized on Feb. 14. He is expected to appear at noon on the 10th-floor balcony of Rome’s Gemelli hospital to greet the crowd and to impart a traditional Sunday blessing, said Matteo Bruni, the Vatican spokesman, at a news conference on Saturday.
The announcements amounted to a remarkable turn of events for the leader of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics. The doctors said that the pope’s case of pneumonia in both lungs had been so severe that it had twice put his life in grave danger.
But they said that he had been stable for two weeks, and in the last three or four days had been asking when he could go home.
“He was very happy,” said Dr. Sergio Alfieri, the leader of the medical team taking care of the pope. Dr. Alfieri added that he was happy to share “the good news that I imagine the whole world was waiting for.”
The doctors said that the pope had overcome his most dangerous infections, but that he was not completely healed and needed to rest for at least two months.
