Pope Francis returned to the Vatican on Friday, at 11.29 a.m., after the conclusion of his Lenten spiritual exercises with the Roman Curia earlier in the morning. The exercises were preached by Msgr. Angelo De Donatis, a Roman pastor. They were held at the Casa Divin Maestro in Ariccia, outside Rome.

At the conclusion of the exercises, the Pope expressed his gratitude to Msgr. De Donatis for his help, accompaniment and listening.

“We now return home with a good seed: the seed of the Word of God,” he said. “The Lord will send rain and that seed will grow. It will grow and it will bear fruit. We thank the Lord for the seed and for the rain that he will send us, but we also want to thank the sower because you were the sower and you know how to do it.”

“And I ask you to continue to pray for this ‘syndicate of believers’,” he said. “We are all sinners but we all have the will to follow Jesus more closely, without losing hope in the promise and also without losing a sense of humour.