Pope Francis presided over his first mass after leaving the hospital while bundled up in a heavy coat.
Tens of thousands of people attended the Palm Sunday Service that the Pope celebrated in St. Peter’s Square.
After a three-day hospital visit to receive bronchitis treatment, he battled a hoarse voice during the ceremony.
During his time at the Gemelli Policlinic in Rome he received antibiotics intravenously.
As he left hospital on Saturday, he quipped ‘I’m still alive, you know’ to reporters who asked how he was feeling.
He then paid a visit to Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, one of Rome’s most famous churches, to pray for the sick children he met while in hospital, the Vatican said.
The Pope’s red vestments were placed over his coat as he sat in a chair under a canopy in the square.
Before this, he held a braided palm branch in a Pope mobile which drove at the tail end of a long procession of cardinals, other prelates and Catholics, carrying palm fronds or olive branches.
Pope Francis baptises newborns as he waits to be discharged from hospital
His voice sounded strong during the Mass opening, but later began to sound strained.
Despite the struggle, the 86-year-old read a 15-minute speech, also adding off-the-cuff remarks and making hand gestures for emphasis.
He focused on moments when someone feel ‘extreme pain, love that fails, or is rejected or betrayed’.
He cited ‘children who are rejected or aborted’, as well as broken marriages, ‘forms of social exclusion, injustice and oppression, (and) the solitude of sickness’.
Francis also spoke about a homeless German man who died, ‘alone, abandoned’, under the colonnade circling St Peter’s Square.
‘I, too, need Jesus to caress me,’ Francis said.
Palm Sunday marks Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem in the time leading up to his crucifixion, which Christians observe on Good Friday.
Sunday’s Mass opened a heavy schedule of Holy Week appointments for the pontiff.
The Vatican said Francis would preside at the Holy Week ceremonies, which culminate with Easter Sunday Mass in the square on April 9.