Pope offers Easter blessing

VATICAN CITY - For the first time in his 26-year pontificate, a frail Pope John Paul II failed to voice a traditional Easter Sunday blessing in an appearance at his apartment window overlooking a rain-dampened St Peter`s Square.
Straining to speak, the pope breathed into a microphone which was passed to him at his open window, but was unable to pronounce the blessing, eventually being forced to concede to his illness.
Many pilgrims among the thousands in the square for his traditional "Urbi et Orbi" were in tears as they watched.
The pope has not spoken in public for two weeks, following his discharge from hospital after a throat operation.