ROME – With his medical status continuing to be stable, Pope Francis Sunday continued his various treatments and therapies and met with two top aides who informed him about various situations in the church and in the world.

According to a March 9 Vatican statement, Pope Francis Sunday morning “continued his therapies, including respiratory and motor therapy.”

He continues to use non-invasive mechanical ventilation during the night and high-flow oxygen therapy through nasal cannulas during the day, to aid in breathing and to prevent further respiratory crises.

Francis also received a visit from Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, and the department’s substitute for general affairs, Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, “who among other things updated him on some situations in the church and in the world.”

Given the pope’s ongoing stable clinical status, there will be no evening medical bulletin from doctors as usual, however, the Vatican’s press office has said it will still provide information on the pope’s activities and condition.

Members of the Roman Curia began a week-long set of spiritual exercises, which will end March 14, and which Pope Francis will participate in spiritually from his private suite on the 10th floor of Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.

He was admitted Feb. 14 for treatment of a complex respiratory infection and double pneumonia that put him in critical condition for several days, with multiple respiratory crises requiring consistent use of oxygen therapy.

Francis has had no fever and has been stable for several days, however, doctors out of caution are still not providing an overall prognosis.

With the Roman Curia on retreat this week, the evening rosary for the pope in St. Peter’s Square has been bumped up and will now take place at the end of Vespers and of the Meditation at 5:00p.m. in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.

Since the spiritual exercises are a time of silent prayer and recollection, members of the public will not attend the rosaries, but will be able to follow along via maxi-screen in St. Peter’s Square.

Once the spiritual exercises are over, communitarian prayer for Pope Francis’s health and recovery will resume “in a renewed way, remaining a sign of faith and ecclesial communion,” the Vatican said, but did not offer further details.

As Pope Francis remains hospitalized, he has delegated official duties, including for jubilee events, to top collaborators.

Sunday’s Mass for the Jubilee for the World of Volunteering, for example, was celebrated by Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, in the pope’s place.

The pope’s Sunday Angelus address was also distributed for publication for the fourth week in a row, as Francis remains unable to deliver the remarks in person.

In Sunday’s reflection, the pope said the church’s season of Lent is a time of purification and spiritual renewal and is thus “a path of growth in faith, hope and charity.”

Referring to the Jubilee for the World of Volunteering, Pope Francis lamented that modern society is too often “enslaved to market logic, where everything risks being subject to the criterion of interest and the quest for profit.”

In this sense, volunteer work, he said, “is prophecy and a sign of hope, because it bears witness to the primacy of gratuitousness, solidarity and service to those most in need.”

He thanked those who volunteer, and for the “closeness and tenderness” they show to others through their work.

Referring to his ongoing hospitalization, which has lasted over three weeks, Francis said that even there he has experienced “the thoughtfulness of service and the tenderness of care, in particular from the doctors and healthcare workers, whom I thank from the bottom of my heart.”

The pope thanked all those who continue to pray for him and he thanked all those who “in various ways are close to the sick, and who are for them a sign of the Lord’s presence.”

“We need this, the ‘miracle of tenderness’ which accompanies those who are in adversity, bringing a little light into the night of pain,” he said.

Francis closed his Angelus urging faithful to pray for peace in the world, especially in Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as in Syria after a revival of violence in recent days claimed hundreds of lives.

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