Thousands of Argentines, many from poor neighborhoods around the capital, gathered on Sunday at a church on the outskirts of Buenos Aires to pray for Pope Francis, who has been hospitalized for more than a month. Bearing drums, cymbals, flags and cans of holy water, Catholic believers and priests gathered at the imposing neo-Gothic Basilica of Our Lady of Lujan, Argentina's patron saint, to pray that Latin America's first pope recovers from pneumonia. "Long live Pope Francis!" Father Jose Maria "Pepe" di Paola, a member of a local group of priests in poor neighborhoods, told the congregation. "This is how we should live the Church as Pope Francis teaches us, a poor church for the poor." Before he was elected to head the Catholic Church of 1.4 billion believers, 12 years ago, Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, had served as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires where his closeness to the poor earned him a nickname: "the slum pope." Pope Francis has yet to return to his home country.
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