by Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope John Paul II returned to the Vatican March 13 after spending 18 days in Rome's Gemelli hospital, where he underwent a tracheotomy and therapy to help him breathe and speak with a tube still in his throat.

Sitting in the front seat of a minivan, the pope arrived at St. Peter's Square at about 6:30 p.m. local time, waving to the estimated 2,000 people and television cameras that had gathered to welcome him home.

Italian schoolchildren dressed in yellow jackets and about 30 Missionaries of Charity dressed in their blue and white saris were among those who shouted, waved and prayed as the pope's car passed slowly and entered St. Peter's Square.

The pope's arrival at the Vatican came about six hours after he spoke live publicly for the first time since being hospitalized Feb. 24 and undergoing surgery to insert a tube into his trachea to ease breathing difficulties.

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the pope's spokesman, said the pope would "continue his convalescence" at the Vatican, leaving the impression that the pope would have a drastically reduced public schedule for several weeks.

Before the Vatican announced the pope was leaving the hospital, Pope John Paul II, speaking from his 10th-floor room at the Gemelli, thanked the crowds who came to visit him and wished everyone at the hospital and those watching on television a "good Sunday and a good week."

Speaking into a microphone from behind the room's closed window, the pope said, "Dear brothers and sisters, thank you for your visit."

The pope's voice was gravelly and difficult to understand, but he did not appear to be struggling to speak.

In addition to his general thanks, he offered special greetings to pilgrims from his Polish hometown, Wadowice.

The pope stayed at the hospital window for five minutes, waving and blessing the crowd gathered in the small square below his window.

On the pope's 18th day in Rome's Gemelli hospital, the Vatican television center broadcast pictures at noon of him sitting in a hospital hallway watching as crowds in St. Peter's Square waved to him.

The Vatican television cameras were on the air again at 6:15 p.m., broadcasting footage taken from the backseat of the pope's minivan as he left the hospital and drove through Rome to the Vatican.

Danuta Wylgala, a Polish woman working in Rome, said she and her friends always go into St. Peter's Square on Sunday evenings after attending Mass nearby.

"It is sad when he is not here," she said. "It is so amazing that we will see him return tonight."

A Missionary of Charity from Africa was pleased the pope was well enough to come home, but was a bit disappointed that she did not actually see him; "there were too many tall people in front of me."

Three Italian girls were squealing with joy after the pope passed by. One of the girls, holding her mobile phone with its built-in digital camera high above her head, managed to get a clear photograph of the pope.

Earlier, at the traditional midday Angelus address, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, a top official in the Vatican Secretariat of State, made the sign of the cross to bless the crowd in the square, while Vatican television showed the pope offering his blessing at the same time.

In the pope's Angelus message, read by Archbishop Sandri, the pope offered special thanks to the journalists who have covered his convalescence, "thanks to which the faithful in every part of the world can feel closer to me and can accompany me with affection and prayers."

"The role of the mass media is very important in our age of global communication," the pope's message said. "Great also is the responsibility of those who work in this field and are called to furnish information punctually, respectful of the dignity of the human person and attentive to the common good.

"During this time of Lent, which calls us to nourish ourselves more abundantly with the Word of God, I would like to recall that it is possible to feed one's spirit also through radio, television and the Internet," the pope's message said.

"I thank those who dedicate themselves to these new forms of evangelization," he said.

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Contributing to this story was Carol Glatz at the Vatican.