VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis returned to doing audiences with the faithful in person on Wednesday after a nearly six-month interruption due to COVID-19.

Francis greeted several hundred socially distanced and masked visitors inside the San Domaso courtyard of the Apostolic Palace.

The audience coincided with the 40th anniversary of an assassination attempt against Saint John Paul II. The pope was gravely wounded on May 13, 1981, by a 23-year-old Turk as he passed through St. Peter’s Square in an open car during a general audience.

Francis said the anniversary “makes us aware that our lives and the history of the world are in the hands of God.”