{"id":7375,"date":"2025-04-19T21:03:40","date_gmt":"2025-04-19T21:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=7375"},"modified":"2025-04-19T21:03:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T21:03:42","slug":"pope-francis-makes-surprise-appearance-at-st-peters-basilica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=7375","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis makes surprise appearance at St. Peter’s Basilica"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pope Francis made a short and unannounced visit Saturday to St. Peter’s Basilica to pray before this evening’s Easter vigil and greet some of the faithful present.<\/p>\n

The 88-year-old pontiff<\/a>, in a wheelchair, arrived at around 6 p.m. local time accompanied by his nurse and stayed for about a quarter hour, stopping to pray at St. Peter’s tomb, the Italian press service Ansa reported.<\/p>\n

The pope greeted those in attendance before heading back to his residence.<\/p>\n

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In this screen grab from a video, Pope Francis greeting people at St. Peter’s Basilica, on April 19, 2025.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Deborah Tomlinson\/Inside the Vatican <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Vatican confirmed Pope Francis “went to St. Peter’s Basilica for a time of prayer, to be close to the faithful who will be celebrating the Vigil of the Holy Night of Easter in the next few hours,” a statement read.<\/p>\n

This is the pope’s latest public appearance during Holy Week. On Thursday, he met with about 70 inmates<\/a> at a prison in Rome.<\/p>\n

“Every year l like to do what Jesus did on Holy Thursday, the washing of the feet, in a prison,” the pope told the attendees, according to a statement from the Vatican. “This year I cannot do it but I wanted to be close to you. I pray for you and all your families.”<\/p>\n

The pontiff also appeared at a mass in St. Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday, greeting a crowd of thousands gathered for the service.<\/p>\n

Francis has remained mostly out of public view since his release in March from Rome’s Gemelli hospital, where he’d spent more than five weeks after being diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia.<\/p>\n

Francis delegated to two cardinals his role in presiding over this weekend’s Easter masses, the Vatican Press Office said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Francis made a short and unannounced visit Saturday to St. Peter’s Basilica to pray before this evening’s Easter vigil and greet some of the faithful present. The 88-year-old pontiff, in a wheelchair, arrived at around 6 p.m. local time accompanied by his nurse and stayed for about a quarter hour, stopping to pray at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7377,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7375\/revisions\/7377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}