Pope appears at hospital window to bless crowd

THE Pope made a surprise appearance at a Rome hospital window yesterday, giving the Roman Catholic faithful their third glimpse of him since his throat surgery nearly two weeks ago.

John Paul II appeared shortly before noon on a day when he traditionally holds his weekly public audience at the Vatican.

Several hundred people, including school children who had come to sing beneath his 10th floor suite at Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic hospital, cheered as he came into view.