Pilgrims cheered as the pope appeared at the third-floor window, decorated with a braided palm frond and the crimson papal banner, and waved an olive branch to the crowd jamming the sun-drenched square for the ceremony ushering in Holy Week.
He appeared for no more than a minute, and did not speak, before the white curtains at his window were drawn closed.
``With great joy I salute you,'' the pope said earlier in remarks read by an archbishop that included a special welcome for young people.
Conspicuous by his absence
ROME (AFP) - A convalescent Pope John Paul II will be conspicuous by his absence fromt most of the traditional ceremonies marking the Holy Week of Easter, the most solemn of the Christian year, as he battles to recover from his recent throat operation.
Catholics around the world will hear and see their spiritual leader less this Holy Week, when ceremonies are broadcast live around the world, than during any previous Easter of his 26-year pontificate.
Senior cardinals will stand in for the 84-year-old Pontiff for most of the ceremonies, though the Vatican said the pope has insisted on performing his traditional Urbi et Orbi (to Rome and the world) blessing on Easter Sunday.
And it has left open the possibility that John Paul II could yet participate in the most emotionally and physically gruelling of the ceremonies, on Good Friday.
John Paul II has always presided over Easter celebrations, but as Parkinson's disease and arthritic complaints have ravaged his once-powerful frame, he has gradually reduced his active participation.
Although they start with Palm Sunday, when Christians commemorate Christ's triumphant arrival in Jerusalem, the Easter ceremonies begin in earnest with Holy Thursday mass, which marks the Last Supper of Christ with his apostles.
In years past, the Pope would wash the feet of several of his cardinals in imitation of Christ's humility. This year, that role falls to Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, who, the Vatican said, would stand in for John Paul II.
In a letter which the Vatican said the Pope wrote during his recent two-andahalf week stay at Rome's Gemelli hospital, Trujillo will deliver the pope's traditional Holy Thursday message to the world's 200,000 Catholic priests, in which he links his own suffering with that of Christ.
He will tell priests that in the Gemelli, he was ''a patient among patients, uniting in the Eucharist my own sufferings with those of Christ.''
Vatican sources said the Pope would, for the first time, play no part in the mass, but would symbolically follow the ceremony from his apartment.
On Friday, the traditional mass of the Passion of Christ held in the early evening at St. Peter's Basilica will be celebrated by US Cardinal James Francis Stafford.
But the Vatican has ng left open the possibility that the Pope may play some part in the Way of the Cross, Holy Week's most solemn ceremony.
The Pope is known to be deeply attached to the ceremony, at Rome's Colosseum, in which Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Christ.
The Vatican has made no comment about the Pope's condition since he brought his 18-day hospitalization to what some experts said was a premature end last Sunday.
Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re told reporters on Saturday that the Pontiff ''continues to improve''.
''The doctors are optimistic and that's a good thing, a good sign,'' said the cardinal.
The Pope, meanwhile, retains his capacity for surprise, appearing unannounced at his apartment window and blessing pilgrims twice last week, fuelling the fervent hopes of a billion Catholics worldwide that he will be able to do so once again on Easter Sunday.
Pontiff skips Palm Sunday Mass
By FRANCES D'EMILIO
VATICAN CITY (AP) — He was the first Pontiff in modern times to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass outside Rome. Now for the first time in his 26-year papacy, Pope John Paul II, battling faltering health, is skipping that major ceremony which ushers in Holy Week.
The Pope's presence instead was to be limited to a brief appearance at his studio window overlooking St. Peter's Square.
Potted olive trees surrounded the obelisk at the center of the square, and row after row of gray plastic chairs were lined up in the vast space Saturday in preparation for Sunday's mid-morning Mass, which commemorates Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
John Paul, who was discharged from the hospital March 13, has long presided over the ceremony marking the start of the most important week in the Roman Catholic liturgical year and which long has been one of this Pope's favorite appointments.
``It will be an unusual opening, that of Holy Week'' without the Pope at Palm Sunday Mass, Vatican Radio commented.
Twenty years ago, John Paul started dedicating Palm Sunday to young people, whom he cherishes as the future of the Church. In 1987, he became the first modern Pontiff to celebrate the day outside Rome when, from an altar atop a three-story-high platform in Buenos Aires, he led nearly a million people at the ceremony.
The Vatican on Friday said John Paul was expected to appear at his studio window on Palm Sunday, but it was unclear if he would speak to pilgrims in the square.
``I think the faithful are going to be very disappointed, but there is nothing they can do. It's life, even if it's sad not to see him on a very special week for the Church,'' said Gordon Bland, a 79-year-old retiree from London who was at St. Peter's Square with his wife Saturday.
Accepting the advice of his doctors, John Paul's only Holy Week commitment is an Easter Sunday blessing, while he regains strength at the Vatican.
A top Vatican cardinal insisted Saturday that doctors were hopeful about the 84-year-old Pontiff's health.
``The Holy Father is hanging in there,'' Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, an Italian who heads the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, told reporters. ``The doctors above all are optimistic, and this is a beautiful thing, a good sign,'' the Italian news agency ANSA quoted the cardinal as saying while in the southern town of Campobasso for a ceremony.
John Paul has only spoken twice publicly _ each time just a few sentences delivered in a raspy voice _ since he had a tube inserted in his throat during surgery Feb. 24 to ease a breathing crisis, his second in less than a month.
Parkinson's disease, which affects muscle control, also makes it difficult for him to speak clearly.
The Pope designated Cardinal Camillo Ruini, his vicar for Rome, to lead Palm Sunday Mass.
In the last several years, because of frail health, the pope already had scaled back some traditions _ for example, he would sit and pray while observing the Good Friday Colosseum procession, no longer carrying the cross.
But John Paul has heartened the faithful by bouncing back at times. Last year on Palm Sunday, he clutched a braided palm as a symbol of hope and peace and kissed babies held out to him during a drive around the square in his ``Popemobile.''
``I hope that the Pope will last a long time, even though with his illness he's teaching us a lot,'' said Cristian Fanton, one of 200 pilgrims from Brescia, Italy, for Palm Sunday. ``I hope after him, they will be able to find someone who is just as charismatic.
To hear the Ppope and to see him suffering gives strength.''
On Palm Sunday 2004, the Pope urged young people to attend the August, 2005, World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany. The trip to Germany is the only foreign pilgrimage in John Paul's schedule this year, but whether he will travel there after his recent medical setbacks was unclear.
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