Pope Francis presided over the Palm Sunday mass after hospitalization for bronchitis

Pope Francis presided over the Palm Sunday Mass, one day after leaving the hospital for bronchitis, and in his homily he defended the “abandoned” of the world. He also thanked prayers for his health.

“No one can be marginalized,” he told thousands of faithful and with the voice still weak during this Eucharist which opens Holy Week.

“Jesus Forsaken asks us to have eyes and a heart for the abandoned. For us, disciples of the Forsaken, no one can be marginalized, no one can be abandoned to their fate,” he encouraged in front of a packed St. Peter’s Square.

In this sense he recalled a beggar who died in the Vatican colonnade “alone and abandoned” and who, he said, represents Christ.

“Many need our closeness, many abandoned, I too need Jesus to caress me, stay close to me, and for this I go to look for him in the abandoned and lonely”, he said.

In his first public appearance, after three days hospitalized for bronchitis at the age of 86, Francisco, covered with a long white coathe meditated on the words of Jesus of Nazareth on the Cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In this sense, he explained that “the verb ‘abandon’ in the Bible is strong” and “appears in moments of extreme pain”, and for this reason the memory of Christ should prompt his followers to “seek him and love him in the abandonment” of our time.

“Today there are so many ‘Christs forsaken’, people classified as problematic”, he complains raising his voice.

But, he argued, there are also many “Christs discarded with the white glove” such as “unborn children, the elderly left alone, in nursing homes, the sick not visited, the disabled ignored, young people who feel a great emptiness without anyone really listening. his cry of pain.”

Francis, still convalescent, reappeared in St. Peter’s Square in front of about 30,000 faithful – according to data from the Holy See – after passing hospitalized for three days at the Gemelli polyclinic in Rome due to bronchitis which manifested itself last Wednesday after the general audience.

Before mass, he was led seated in an open carriage in the center of the square, at the foot of the obelisk, to bless the olive and palm branches that the faithful, nuns and members of the Curia had carried in procession, recalling the triumphal entry of Jesus of Nazareth into Jerusalem.

Under the car on your foot and then he walked a few meters to the place set up for the blessing helped by the cane which he uses frequently due to his knee problems.

The Pope then went in front of the basilica, again by car and with his own palm, to preside over the mass from there, which was officiated by a cardinal, today the Argentine Leonardo Sandri, a formula that will be repeated throughout the week Santa .