VATICAN CITY — From the studio window of his residence, Pope John Paul II silently blessed thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square for Palm Sunday and the diocesan celebration of World Youth Day. For the first time in his 26-year pontificate, the pope did not preside over the Palm Sunday Mass, nor did he deliver the Angelus address and prayer at the end of the ceremony.

Instead, the pope's Angelus address was read and the midday prayer recited from the square below by Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, a top official in the Vatican Secretariat of State. The archbishop said the pope followed the ceremony that marks the beginning of Holy Week on television.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope's vicar for the Diocese of Rome, presided over the Palm Sunday Mass. At the end of the Mass, the crowd cheered, clapped and chanted the pope's name in the hopes of coaxing the pope into making an appearance.

Groups of young people held aloft colorful banners, one of which read in Roman dialect, "Come on Karol! We're with you!"

The pope's studio window was wide open for the duration of the two-and-a-half-hour ceremony, but its white curtain remained closed. A tall, braided palm stalk stood perched against the windowsill, while some 50,000 people waited in the square below.

After Archbishop Sandri read the pope's Angelus address and recited the Marian prayer, the curtain to the pope's fifth-floor apartment window was opened and the pope made a brief, two-minute appearance. Looking pale and seated behind a small lectern, the pope blessed the crowds, first with an olive branch and then with his outstretched right hand, showing a small bandage on his wrist.

In what seemed to be an expression of frustration, the pope raised his hand to his forehead and thumped it down forcefully on the plastic lectern in front of him. The pope has not spoken publicly since March 13, the day he was released from Rome's Gemelli hospital after undergoing a tracheotomy Feb. 24 to ease breathing difficulties.

The pope dedicated his Palm Sunday Angelus address to young people around the world to mark the anniversary of the beginning of World Youth Day in 1984.

On Palm Sunday, "Twenty or so years ago, right here in this square, World Youth Day had its beginning," his text read.

"I increasingly realize how providential and prophetic it is that precisely this day, Palm Sunday and the Lord's Passion, has become your day," the text read.

In his message read by Archbishop Sandri, the pope called on young people to continue to be tireless witnesses of Christ's cross.

"You adore Christ's cross, which you carry the world over, because you have believed in the love of God, fully revealed in the crucified Christ," the pope wrote.

For the Palm Sunday Mass held in St. Peter's Square, dozens of cardinals and bishops took part in the morning procession carrying staffs made from woven palm leaves.

Scores of other participants carried large, leafy palm fronds and olive branches that had been blessed by Cardinal Ruini at the start of the ceremony in the shadow of the ancient Egyptian obelisk in the middle of the square.

In his homily, Cardinal Ruini said the "strength and hope in redemption" emanates from Christ's cross.

"The drama and the mystery of suffering" are not eliminated by the cross, but rather "they no longer appear as something obscure and senseless," he said.

Special prayers for the pope were offered at the Mass asking that he be comforted "so that his witness of fidelity to Christ will be an example and model to all the young people of the world of the great love" for God.