Pope Francis: I feel the finger of God and experiment his love caress

Pope Francis, who appeared by surprise in the Plaza de San Pedro, still convalescent by bilateral pneumonia, said he is experiencing the “affectionate caress” of God during this period of long illness in which his public commitments has annulled by medical prescription.

“Dear, as during hospitalization, also now in convalescence I feel the finger of God and experiment his affectionate caress,” said the pontiff in the message he prepared for the angelus prayer.

He was not planned but the Holy Father arrived in the Plaza de San Pedro where hundreds of faithful had congregated by the jubilee of the sick around 11:45 (local time) who received him with joy.

He did it in a wheelchair and using the nasal cannulas through which he receives oxygen which helps breathe.

In his message for the Sunday prayer, Pope Francis commented on the gospel of the fifth Sunday of Lent, focused on the adulterous woman, and highlighted the mercy of Jesus, who “returns to this woman the lost beauty.”

Faced with the trial of the scribes and Pharisees, the Lord does not condemn, “pass his finger on that dust and write for her a new story.”

Pope Francis confessed to feel personally touched by that same “finger of God” in this stage of fragility.

In the context of the jubilee of the sick and the world of health, which the Catholic Church celebrated this weekend in the context of the Holy Year of Hope, requested prayers for all those who suffer and for those who attend them: doctors, nurses and health personnel, “who do not always have the right conditions to work and, sometimes, they are even victims of aggressions.”

“Its mission is not easy and must be supported and respected,” he said.

He also requested that “the necessary resources for attention and research be invested, so that health systems are inclusive and attend to the most fragile and poor”

In his message, he also thanked the gesture of proximity of the inmates of the Women’s Prison of Rebibbia, who sent him a card. “I pray for them and their families,” he said.

On the occasion of World Sports and Development Day, he expressed his desire that sport is a sign of hope for the most vulnerable and valued the work of sports associations that educate in fraternity.

Pope Francis, as usual in his messages, took advantage of the Angelus to call for peace.

Thus, he asked for prayers by the peoples hit by war and violence: from the “martyred Ukraine”, where the “attacks continue to leave civilian victims”, to Gaza, where “people are forced to live in unimaginable conditions, without a roof, without food, without drinking water.”

He also mentioned the difficult situation in the Middle East, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar – accused by an earthquake – and Haiti, where two religious were recently killed.

“That the weapons shut up and the dialogue resumes,” said Pope Francis that concluded the message with an invocation to the Virgin Mary.