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In the end, it was not the solemn corridors of a hospital ward that bore witness to Pope Francis’s final days, but the sun-drenched square of St Peter’s Basilica, draped in spring tulips and echoing with chants of “Viva il Papa”.

Doctors had pleaded with him to rest. The double pneumonia had nearly claimed him just weeks before. He was 88, frail, and barely breathing at times during a 38-day hospital stay so dire his physicians, in private, considered letting nature take its course.

Yet, Francis had a different kind of prognosis in mind — one not guided by medicine, but by a mission.

He would live until Easter. He would speak one last time to the world.

Holy Week, with its heavy symbolism of sacrifice and renewal, saw the Pontiff re-emerge from convalescence in what now seems an act of sheer spiritual defiance.

Earlier in the week, he had received a small group of children at the Apostolic Palace, surprising them with Easter sweets and simple words of affection.

“I can’t do what I used to,” he reportedly told them, “but I can still smile.”

From Maundy Thursday, when he insisted on visiting inmates at Rome’s Regina Coeli prison despite........

© Brisbane Times