International
Pope Francis appears frail as he returns to Vatican following 38-day hospital stay

From LifeSiteNews
By Michael Haynes, Snr. Vatican Correspondent
The Pope blessed the gathered crowd at Rome’s Gemelli hospital before leaving to return to his Vatican residence.
Pope Francis made his return to the Vatican Sunday, after first greeting crowds from the balcony of the Gemelli hospital.
For the first time in 38 days, Pope Francis appeared before the public eye on Sunday. Greeting crowds who had gathered outside the Gemelli hospital where he has been treated for double pneumonia since February 14, Francis was noticeably weakened and frail.
He wore no nasal cannulas during his less than three minute greeting on the balcony. But the toll of being without oxygen was marked, as Francis appeared particularly breathless as he was wheeled back inside.
Pope Francis gives a blessing from the Gemelli hospital window at Angelus time this morning, marking first time he has been seen since February 14.
He has now returned to the Vatican after leaving the hospital earlier today. https://t.co/jOFgg1envg pic.twitter.com/2TQhgRpLNV
— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) March 23, 2025
Francis thanked the crowds before singling out and praising a woman who had brought a bouquet of flowers with her.
Accompanied by his personal nurse Massimiliano Strappetti, Francis did not seem able to raise his arms freely. After a very brief few words of thanks, Francis had to be reminded to give his blessing before then being wheeled inside by Strappetti.
This was the first time the Pope had been seen in-person since his hospitalization in mid-February – an event which his doctors noted Saturday was fraught with considerable life-threatening danger for the Pope.
Following his balcony appearance – which was live-streamed on the Vatican News media channels – Francis was driven back to the Vatican in his customary Fiat 500. But he made an unscheduled stop at St. Mary Major’s on the journey, giving the bouquet of flowers he had noticed at the hospital to the Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, the co-adjutor priest of Francis’ favored Roman basilica.
The event was in keeping with Francis’ long-established custom of visiting the icon of Mary, Salus Populi Romani, in the basilica before and after every papal trip he has made. Indeed he has announced his desire to be buried in the basilica, and preparations have begun accordingly to ready an area close to the icon for his interment.
As stipulated by his doctors on Saturday, Francis will now begin a convalescence period of at least two months.
His motor and respiratory therapy will continue, as evidenced by the undeniable need for oxygen yesterday when he did not use it for three minutes on the balcony.
Doctors stated during Saturday’s press conference that Francis nearly lost his life twice during his time in the hospital, confirming reports which had circulated about the Pope’s condition. Indeed, Dr. Sergio Alfieri, who leads the Pope’s medical team, said that when Francis was hospitalized February 14 he “presented [with] an acute respiratory failure,” which led to “severe” double pneumonia.
Doctor leading Pope Francis' medical team confirms past seriousness of Francis' condition, incl 2 times his life was in danger
When Francis was hospitalized Feb 14 he "presented [with] an acute respiratory failure," which led to "severe" double pneumonia.
Details on @LifeSite https://t.co/2aSyyMA99g pic.twitter.com/sfBJaYhLzo— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) March 22, 2025
Nurse Strappetti and Dr. Luigi Carbone – who is deputy director of the Health and Hygiene Department of Vatican City State and Francis’ physician in the Vatican – will coordinate the daily medical care of the Pope.
His social contact is limited by necessity as doctors warn about the danger of his contracting any new infection. As such, it will likely be the case that his already small inner circle of three secretaries and medical staff will be those who form part of Francis’ daily household.
While a regular visitor in the Pope’s normal schedule, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin only visited Francis three times in his 38-day hospitalization. Such a distance between them would suggest that Parolin himself might not be anticipated to be as regular a visitor as in the past.
For now, though, Francis’ pontificate is going to be placed under particular scrutiny. He has returned to the Vatican but he is expected to be a much more hidden and vocally quiet pontiff than before.
Yet perhaps, bereft of voice, he will focus more on issuing documents and pushing through agendas he has long had in mind – such as the recent three-year extension of the Synod on Synodality.
Doctors described him as eager to return to work. His appearance on Sunday gave the impression of a man much more frail than the image painted by his clinical team.
Whether a quiet period will descend upon Vatican hill, or a season of frenzied activity begins, now remains to be seen.
Regardless, speculation of a conclave has already long begun thanks to Francis’ hospitalization, and cardinals will likely be ever more on the lookout for candidates as the year progresses.
Dr. Robert Malone
WHO and G20 Exaggerate the Risk and Economic Impact of Outbreaks

From Malone News
Poor quality modeling is being used by WHO and a G20 panel to project our risk of infectious disease pandemics and the financial requirements to address them.
Previously considered a once in a century event, major pandemics are now predicted to occur every 20 to 40 years.
Global authorities view this as an existential threat, and have called for a coordinated international response led by the World Health Organization or the WHO…but not everyone agrees with this perspective.
Researchers from the University of Leeds, including policy experts, Professor Garrett Brown and Dr David Bell, are challenging the assumptions behind these dire warnings. They question whether the massive resources being allocated to pandemic preparedness are truly supported by the evidence.
One of their critiques centers on a chart frequently cited by the WHO, which appears to show a dramatic increase in the outbreaks over the past two decades. Brown and Bell say the chart omits crucial historical context and misrepresents today’s health threats.
Long-standing diseases like yellow fever, influenza, cholera, and the plague have been steadily brought under control, and outbreaks of diseases like monkey pox or natural coronaviruses have likely remained consistent over time, but what has changed, they say, is our improved diagnostic technology enabling us to distinguish diseases more readily than ever before.
Essentially, as surveillance increases, so does the likelihood of finding diseases that may have existed but previously went unnoticed.
In reality, mortality from infectious diseases has been declining for decades, thanks to advances in hygiene, nutrition, medical treatments and reduced poverty, even with COVID 2020, to 2021, mortality remained below 2010 levels.
The WHO has identified nine priority diseases for research and development, yet five of these diseases have never caused more than 1000 recorded deaths in history, aside from COVID 19, whose origins remain a topic of debate, the rest of the diseases are largely confined to specific regions, primarily in parts of Africa.
On the list the WHO also includes a hypothetical outbreak that they call disease X – it’s a placeholder for an unknown outbreak that could emerge in the future.
And while it’s intended to promote vigilance, its severity is entirely speculative and can encourage modelers to use catastrophic scenarios to estimate future risk, causing governments to make fear-based policy decisions based on little evidence.
Brown and Bell are concerned that so much focus on speculative pandemic preparedness is diverting critical resources away from urgent health issues such as tuberculosis and malaria.
Tuberculosis alone kills 1.3 million people annually, while malaria accounts for over 600,000 deaths, mostly among children.
Although testing and treatment for these diseases is relatively inexpensive, their funding could be at risk as more resources are directed towards hypothetical future threats in 2022 a high level, independent panel was convened by the G20 to review our risk of pandemics and the financial requirements to address it.
But again, the two main pieces of evidence the panel relied on to draw its conclusions grossly exaggerated the actual risk of a pandemic.
The first report provided by the G20 panel analysed the major outbreaks of the past two decades, and it was poorly referenced, excluding Covid-19 and the 2009 swine flu, which caused fewer deaths than seasonal flu, the total number of deaths from these events over the last 20 years was under 26,000 a relatively insignificant figure in the context of global disease burdens.
The second report was from Metabiota, a former private. US based corporation, the two graphs provided appear to show an exponential increase in recorded outbreaks. Yet the researchers point out that this trend aligns with the development of modern diagnostic technologies, which naturally increase the detection of previously unnoticed diseases, indeed, the absence of recorded disease outbreaks in the 60s coincides with a lack of technology and communication systems needed to document them.
Metabiota report also included data from an article published in the British Medical Journal in 2023 it shows the rise in mortality outbreaks over the last decade is almost entirely due to Ebola outbreaks – and when these Ebola deaths are excluded from Metabiota data – the mortality trend over the last two decades shows a clear decline – a finding that contradicts the narrative of increasing pandemic risk, the financial demands of the pandemic agenda are another concern.
The G20 panel relied on a report released by the World Bank and the WHO in 2022, which sought $31.1 billion in funding, and an additional World Bank report, using poorly supportive data, sought another 10 to 11 billion annually.
On top this report referenced a 2020 study by Maryanne, which also claimed to show an increase in the frequency of disease outbreaks, but closer inspection reveals the opposite, a sharp decline in disease outbreaks between 2010 and 2020 – and like the Metabiota report – this World Bank report overlooks the fact that the development of new diagnostic tests could account for any observed increase In disease outbreaks since 1960.
Finally, the WHO report exaggerates the economic impact of outbreaks by including extraordinary costs of actions, such as stimulus packages, while downplaying the costs of endemic diseases used for comparison.
This creates a false impression that these relatively low fatality outbreaks were costlier than other diseases, and that such costs could be fully avoided while preparing for pandemics is undoubtedly important.
Brown and Bell argue that the narrative of escalating pandemic threats is misleading. They suggest that the risk from naturally occurring disease outbreaks may actually be decreasing with the rise in detected outbreaks, primarily a result of better diagnostic tools.
Researchers warn that essential global priorities such as cancer, tuberculosis, malaria and nutrition support could be neglected. For example, funding for nutrition development dropped 10% in 2020 and has yet to return to pre pandemic levels.
If resources continue to be diverted towards speculative future scenarios, proven efforts to combat the world’s deadliest diseases may be overshadowed and ultimately cause more harm than good.
Business
CDC stops $11 billion in COVID ’emergency’ funding to health departments, NGOs

Fr0m LifeSiteNews
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been providing massive funds in the name of COVID despite the fact that Joe Biden admitted the ‘pandemic’ was over by 2022.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is withdrawing $11.4 billion in COVID funding to state and local health departments, non-government groups, and international recipients about two years after the U.S. government declared the COVID-19 “national emergency” over.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” HHS director of communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement, NBC News reported.
“HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.“
Despite the fact that former President Joe Biden admitted in 2022 that the COVID “pandemic” was over, Health and Human Services (HHS) has been continuing to allocate funds for COVID testing, “vaccines,” and “global COVID projects,” according to CDC talking points.
The funding cut comes as millions of dollars for other initiatives, including vaccine hesitancy research and HIV prevention, are slashed under new HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
HHS has made the greatest funding cutbacks government-wide, according to the Department of Government Efficiency’s website.
Dr. Robert Malone argued in 2023 that the only reason the Biden administration decided to end the national COVID “emergency” when it did is because of the congressional legislation seeking that end.
“The bottom line is that the imperial U.S. administrative state will never give up these unconstitutional powers until forced to do so,” Malone wrote.
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