Pope Francis Will Be Discharged From the Hospital on Sunday, Doctors Say

The 88-year-old pontiff has been hospitalized for six weeks with pneumonia in both lungs. He will need to rest in the Vatican for at least two months, his doctors said.

Pope Francis’ condition has improved enough that he will be discharged from a hospital in Rome on Sunday and sent to recover in the Vatican for at least two months, his doctors said on Saturday evening.

On Sunday, Francis plans to make his first public appearance since he was hospitalized on Feb. 14. He is expected to appear at noon on the 10th-floor balcony of Rome’s Gemelli hospital, where he has been staying, to greet the crowd and to impart a traditional Sunday blessing, Matteo Bruni, the Vatican spokesman, said at a news conference on Saturday.

The announcement of the pope’s coming release made for a remarkable turn of events for the leader of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, after weeks in which he lay in critical condition and the Roman Catholic Church seemed on the brink of a conclave to pick his successor. Instead, Francis’ steady, if slow, improvement has ushered in a new phase for him and the church.

He will return to the Vatican, physically diminished, at least in the short term, without his voice, reliant on oxygen and deprived of closeness to the faithful, which has been the hallmark of his pontificate and the manifestation of his pastoral vision for the church.

“It’s a sigh of relief,” Father Antonio Spadaro, a close associate of Francis’, said Saturday evening. He added that for the church, but also for a world in flux, “there was a great anticipation, as well as need, for his presence.”

Francis had been able to govern the church from the hospital, but after he finished his blessing on Sunday he would go home, Mr. Bruni said.