The doctors had implored him to ease his schedule and avoid the crowds to stave off infection. Pope Francis agreed up to a point – but it was simply not in his nature to comply fully.

After all, there were benedictions to bestow, babies to bless, prisoners to comfort. As far as the pontiff was concerned, God’s work never stopped – not even if you were 88 and recovering from a near-fatal bout of double pneumonia.

And so, towards the end of Holy Week, the Pope was more visible than at any time since his discharge from Rome’s Agostino Gemelli Hospital on March 23, where he had undergone five weeks of intensive treatment, his life on the line for much of that time. He had allowed himself a convalescence of less than a month. The doctors had recommended two.

They had seen how close he had come to death in those weeks in hospital. In fact, he had been so ill, battling pneumonia in both lungs, that they had considered letting him die, according to Dr Sergio Alfieri, the head of his medical team.

Although the Pope remained conscious throughout his time in hospital, there were moments he struggled to breathe, particularly after he suffered a “bronchospasm crisis” in late February. It was so bad, the doctors fretted he would not survive the night.

The odds were against him, and not just because of his age. His lungs had been in bad shape for decades; the upper part of the right one had been removed after he suffered a respiratory infection when he was 21. 

Yet somehow he pulled through. As Lent drew to a close it seemed that, remarkably – perhaps even miraculously – this famously doughty Pope might yet regain his full health.

Easter Sunday address

Of course, he was not the man he once was. However, several appearances on Easter Sunday in the hours before he died had raised hopes among the Catholic faithful that he was truly on the mend.

Looking frail but better than he had in his previous appearances since leaving hospital, Pope Francis was wheeled out onto the central loggia of St Peter’s Basilica at the end of the Urbi et Orbi, the traditional blessing recited at Easter and Christmas before the crowds in the famous piazza.

“Brothers and sisters, Happy Easter,” he said into the microphone held before him, drawing a roar from the crowds below. His voice, though still reedy, was stronger than before. The nasal tubes carrying supplemental oxygen that he had been wearing on Palm Sunday the previous week were gone.