The Vatican, though, made alternative plans for Ash Wednesday next week, making clear Francis still had a long road ahead. Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, a Vatican official and former vicar of Rome, will preside over the March 5 ceremony and procession that inaugurates the church's solemn Lenten season leading up to Easter in April.

The Ash Wednesday procession from the Church of St. Anselm to the Basilica of Santa Sabina will be celebrated by Cardinal Angelo De Donatis.

While Pope Francis’s condition has continued to improve, the Vatican announced that he will not lead his traditional Ash Wednesday services in Rome March 5.

Nearly 2,000 years after a young man died in the Vesuvius volcanic eruption, scientists have discovered that his brain was preserved when it turned to glass in an extremely hot cloud of ash. Researchers found the glass in 2020 and speculated that it was a fossilised brain but did not know how it had formed.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius 2,000 years ago turned a victim’s brain tissue into glass. Scientists say they have figured out how this unusual phenomenon occurred.