Pope John Paul Back On Track
John Paul II is back on his feet again after TuesdayÂ's health scare, reports CBS News Correspondent Jesse Schulman.
On Thursday he joined 250,000 pilgrims in prayer before Poland's holiest icon, winding up his grueling tour of his native land with moments of deep religious reflection.
The pope was there to celebrate Mass, and it was unclear as to whether he would be well enough or if he would have to save his strength. In the end, everything went very well.
The pope walked to the altar, leaning on his staff, then was helped by two priests up the three steps to his chair. "Long live the pope," the crowd chanted, receiving a smile and blessing from the pontiff.
His voice sounded improved from his last speech Monday night, when he sounded weak and tired.
Many at the Mass had arrived near dawn and stood in the cold rain for hours without even knowing for sure whether the pope was coming -- illustrating the intensity of feeling Poles have for the first Polish pope.
Tuesday, he left a crowd estimated at 1.5 million people standing, disappointed he didnÂ't show up.
The trip to the Jasna Gora shrine was not originally on the Pope's schedule and its hasty inclusion on the last day reflected the increasingly valedictory tone of the 79-year-old's pilgrimage.
Two health scares during the trip reinforced the impression that the Pope's age, his packed schedule over the next two years and his frailty may prevent him seeing his homeland again.
"The path of my pilgrimage to the homeland could not omit the shrine of Jasna Gora. This place is so close to my heart and so close to each of you, dear brothers and sisters," said the Pope.
The Pope, who has a profound devotion to the Virgin Mary, has visited Czestochowa on every major trip he has made to Poland.
The crowd gave thanks that neither a fall on Saturday that left the Pope with three stitches in a head cut, nor a bout of flu that forced him to cancel a day of events, had prevented him from coming to Czestochowa in south-central Poland.
"I prayed to God to let the Pope to come here. I am too poor to travel anywhere else to see him," said Sitlawa Jarosz, 60, who saw the Pope on four previous visits to the shrine.
Earlier the Pope had bid farewell to Krakow, the city where he was cardinal before his election to the papacy in 1978.
In Krakow there was none of the heartfelt public reminiscence the Pope displayed in his hometown Wadowice on Wednesday, when he recalled his home, his school days, friends from his youth and his time as an actor.
A solemn Pope prayed in silence under a white canopy erected in the leafy Rakowicki cemetery to protect him from pouring rain. His parents and brother, who all died before he was 21, are buried at the plot.
The Pope departs for Rome later Thursday.
John Paul will now return to Rome on Thursday instead of flying to Armenia to meet the ailing Orthodo patriarch.
The Armenia visit, which was tacked on to the end of the pilgrimage Monday, "cannot be done in these circumstances," spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said, adding that it would be rescheduled.
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