VATICAN CITY: The Vatican released the first photograph of Pope Francis on Sunday since his hospitalization over a month ago, showing the pontiff celebrating mass earlier in the day from the chapel in his hospital suite. The release of the photo was significant, as the Argentine pope has not been seen in public since being admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on February 14 for pneumonia in both lungs, which for weeks doctors considered critical. The photo shows the 88-year-old pope, bare-headed without his customary white skullcap and wearing a white robe and purple stole. 

He is seated in a wheelchair in front of a simple altar with a crucifix on the wall. The Vatican said it had been taken Sunday morning.

Taken from behind Francis’ right side, his face is not fully visible but his eyes are open as he looks in a downward direction. “This morning Pope Francis concelebrated the Holy Mass in the chapel of the apartment on the tenth floor of the Gemelli Polyclinic,” the Vatican press office wrote in the photograph’s caption. Concelebration is the joint celebration of mass by senior clerics. — AFP