Like every week, the "Immaculate Conception Kids" gathered to pray under the windows on Sunday (March 9). However, for the past month, not the ones of the papal apartments overlooking St. Peter's Square but those of the Gemelli hospital in Rome, where Pope Francis had been treated since February 14 with a severe respiratory infection.

"I think that if my father were in the hospital, I would go and visit him. So we are here for this, like the children who visit the father, the Holy Father", Father Michele Reschini, a member of the 'House of Mary' community and responsible for training the 'Guys of the Immaculate', said.

Like clockwork, every Sunday they show up in St. Peter's Square carrying their banner "The Immaculate Will Win" during Francis' weekly Angelus prayer shouting "Long live the pope" after the pontiff's final greetings. 

Pope spent 'quiet night' in hospital: Vatican

And now, since the admission of the 88-year-old pope, they just changed location from the famed square to the one of "Agostino Gemelli" hospital in Rome, offering their prayers for the pope's health since his admission and taking part in evening rosaries at the Vatican.  

"We don't shout it here for respect to the place, but we shout it in the prayer, because we think that 'Long live the pope,' means 'Long live the Church'," Father Reschini said.

Father Reschini is responsible for the formation of the "Immaculate Conception kids", who have been so-called since 1994, when Cardinal Andrzej Maria Deskur, a supporter of the "House of Mary" community, introduced them to then Pope John Paul II in an audience under this name. 

Since then, they have always waved the banner "Immaculate Will Win" at Angelus prayers, during the pontificates of Pope John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis, to bear witness to their faith and hope in the Virgin Mary, to whom Pope Francis is also very devoted.

"He gathered us with his gaze, he noticed us, and this has always been a great experience of mercy," Father Reschini said at Gemelli Hospital, where the "Immaculate Conception Kids" have previously prayed during Pope Francis's past admissions. The Pope has faced ongoing health issues, including repeated flu symptoms this year, surgeries for his colon in July 2021, and an abdominal hernia in June 2023.

And even if the windows of the papal flats at the Vatican and on the tenth floor of the Gemelli hospital remain closed, and Francis has not been seen in public since entering the hospital, the "Immaculate Conception kids" are always at his side.

"He always says, don't forget to pray for me", Father Reschini told Reuters. "I would tell him, Holiness, we do not forget you, we pray for you."

(Production: Leonardo Benassatto, Oriana Boselli)