Shortly before returning to his home in the Vatican on Sunday, Pope Francis made a brief appearance from a fifth-floor balcony of the Gemelli Clinic in Rome to a crowd of faithful gathered outside the hospital.

Pope Francis is making his first public appearance in five weeks before being discharged from the hospital where he was treated for a life-threatening case of pneumonia.

Pope Francis’s condition has continued to improve and he no longer needs to use noninvasive mechanical ventilation to help him breathe at night.