The Vatican unveils a first photo since the start of its hospitalization

For the occasion, the pope has put on white dawn and purple stole, the liturgical color of Lent. While he had not appeared for a month, a photo of him was broadcast by the Saint-Siège press office.

Here he is sitting in his chair, in profile only, praying during the Sunday mass of March 16 in the chapel of the Polyclinique Gemelli (Rome), where he has been hospitalized since February 14 for bilateral pneumonia. Until now, the Vatican had refused to disclose any image of the Holy Father, by virtue of a rule of the Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, promulgated by John Paul II in 1996, prohibiting taking images of a sovereign Pontife, sick, aliti or deceased.

Four decades earlier, the Catholic community had been shaken by the images of Pope Pius XII, then dying, taken without his knowledge by his personal doctor. For his part, if Pope Francis says he is “weakened” and “confronted with an ordeal”, he continues to address his faithful by written messages.