Pope back in Vatican

Pope John Paul II left hospital today after spending more than two weeks recovering from emergency surgery.

The 84-year-old Pope, who had an operation to insert a breathing tube in his windpipe, crossed himself just before he left Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic in a Mercedes minivan with tinted windows rather than in the glass-panelled ‘pope mobile’ he used after a spell in hospital last month.

A television camera inside the van showed the Pope en route back to Vatican City, and he waved through a partially open window at the thousands of Romans and tourists lining the two-and-a-half mile route.