Pope Leo leads the Angelus from his window, five days after lung cancer surgery, and promises a gradual return to his duties

Five days after lung surgery, the pope was back at the window. Pope Leo XIV appeared at midday on Sunday at the window of his apartment in the Apostolic Palace, smiling, standing unaided, and led the Angelus prayer for the thousands gathered in St. Peter Square below, many of them runners from the Rome marathon who had come down the main avenue that morning. The crowd cheered when he waved.

I have truly felt your support. Thank you, he told them. This experience has given me a profound sense of closeness to all those who are going through illness or a state of infirmity. Now that this delicate phase has passed, I will gradually resume my activities, always with the help of God and your prayers. He thanked the doctors, nurses and staff of Rome Gemelli Hospital by name as a group, and urged the faithful to serve God without compromise. In his reflection he took up the Gospel line about giving to the emperor what belongs to the emperor and to God what belongs to God, urging integrity and a rejection of hypocrisy.

Leo was discharged from the Gemelli on Saturday, a day earlier than the week in hospital his doctors had first expected. The operation on October 13 removed the lower lobe of his right lung after a small, well localized nodule found at a routine checkup was confirmed during surgery as lung adenocarcinoma, the most common form of lung cancer. He is 71 and the first American pope.

Two medical facts still carry his prognosis, and neither has been released: the size of the tumor and whether the cancer had spread to nearby lymph nodes. What has been released is the judgment of the man who operated on him. Professor Stefano Margaritora told Vatican media there are no clinical reasons why the Latin America trip should not take place, and the Vatican says the November 6 to 17 journey to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, where Leo served for years as a missionary and bishop, will go forward. His other public appearances are cancelled until Wednesday, October 21, as of October 18. The return itself was staged as a signal and received as one: a pope who announced his own cancer from that window a week ago stood at it again, on schedule, and prayed on time.