Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis marked three weeks battling double pneumonia in hospital on Friday, reported by the Vatican to be “stable” but sounding weak and breathless in his first audio message.

The 88-year-old head of the Catholic Church has not been seen in public since his admission to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on February 14 and has suffered several respiratory crises, the most recent on Monday.

Amid growing concern and increasingly lurid speculation online, the Holy See on Thursday released a short audio message recorded that day by Francis, the first time his voice has been heard in weeks.

“I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your prayers for my health from the Square. I accompany you from here,” he said, sounding weak and taking laboured breaths, with some words fading away into nothing.

“May God bless you and the Virgin protect you. Thank you,” the Argentine said in his native Spanish.

The message was broadcast in Saint Peter’s Square, where prayers have been held every evening for the pope, and applause broke out among the hundreds of pilgrims gathered there.

“We were very happy that he could speak,” said John Maloney, a 76-year-old English pilgrim visiting Rome for the 2025 Jubilee holy year celebrations.

“It’s a good sign that he’s actually able to speak,” he told AFP, adding: “He’s got a long way to go so he’s in the hands of God.”

But for Claudia Bianchi, a 50-year-old Italian from Rome, “it struck me to hear him so tired”.

- ‘Good sign’ -

The pope’s message was on the front page of many of Italy’s newspapers, who reported that it was an attempt by the Vatican to battle fake news about the pontiff’s deterioration or even death.

They noted the weakness of his voice, with the Corriere della Sera daily describing it as “pained”.

“It was a positive sign, so it gives us hope that he still has the strength to speak. And he always seems to want to be with us,” Alessandra Dalboni, a 53-year-old Rome local, told AFP on Thursday evening.

The Vatican said earlier on Thursday that Francis, who will mark 12 years as pontiff next week, was in a “stable” condition, with no repeat of Monday’s respiratory failure.

It said that “in view of the stability of the clinical picture”, there would be no medical bulletin on Friday evening as in previous days.

The next is due on Saturday.

In a shift from a past lack of transparency, the Vatican has been publishing an update on how the pope slept every morning, followed by a more detailed medical bulletin each evening.

On Friday morning, it provided the usual brief update, saying Francis “passed a calm night and woke up shortly after 8:00am (0700 GMT)“.

On Thursday night, the Vatican said he had continued with his breathing exercises and physiotherapy, did not have a fever and managed to do a bit of work.

- Prognosis reserved -

Nonetheless, “the doctors are still maintaining a reserved prognosis”, it said, meaning they will not say how they expect his condition to evolve.

During previous hospitalisations, the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics appeared on the Gemelli balcony for his weekly Sunday Angelus prayer.

But he has missed the last three, and no announcement has yet been made about whether he will make an appearance this weekend.

The pope has suffered a series of health issues in recent years, from colon surgery in 2021 to a hernia operation in 2023, but this is the longest and most serious hospitalisation of his papacy.

He was initially diagnosed with bronchitis but it developed into pneumonia in both lungs and he has suffered three days of breathing crisis.

On February 22, he suffered a “prolonged asthmatic respiratory crisis” and on February 28 had “an isolated crisis of bronchospasm” – a tightening of the muscles that line the airways in the lungs.

On Monday March 3, Francis “experienced two episodes of acute respiratory failure, caused by a significant accumulation of endobronchial mucus and consequent bronchospasm”, the Vatican said.

Francis’s health has regularly led to speculation, particularly among his critics, as to whether he could resign like his predecessor, Benedict XVI.