“Regarding the health conditions of the pope emeritus, for whom Pope Francis asked for prayer at the end of the general audience this morning, I can confirm that in the last few hours there has been a worsening due to advancing age,” he reported. the director of the Vatican press office, Matteo Bruni.
“For the moment, the situation remains under control, constantly monitored by the doctors,” he added. At the end of the general audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis went to the monastery where the pope emeritus resides to visit him, Bruni explained in a brief note. Meanwhile, from the protected and hermetic convent Mater Ecclesiae, in the Vatican gardens, where Benedict XVI has lived apart since 2013 after his resignation, no information came out.
“I ask a special prayer for Pope Benedict XVI who is supporting the Church in silence and to remember that he is very ill and asking the Lord to comfort him and support him in this testimony of love for the Church until the end,” said the Argentine pontiff during the general audience.
The last photograph of the emeritus was published on December 1 by the Joseph Ratzinger Foundation, when the emeritus pope received the two Ratzinger Prize winners at his residence, the French biblical scholar Michel Fédou and the Jewish jurist Joseph Weiler.
As in the last images, Benedict was seen sitting on the sofa next to his faithful secretary, Georg Gänswein, and he appeared very thin, but attentive to the conversation. All those who have visited him in recent months assure that Ratzinger speaks with a small voice, who does not walk and looks very fragile, but who is completely lucid.
In other recent photographs, he has been seen in a wheelchair in the Vatican gardens sunbathing a bit, which is, according to his closest circle, something common, because the emeritus pope maintains discipline despite his age. He concelebrates mass at 7.30 and then listens to music on his sofa, while sometimes receiving visitors.
Last August he received the new cardinals who, along with Pope Francis, came to visit him. He has spent the last few months in silence, except at the beginning of the year when he had to deal with accusations about how he had managed some cases of priests accused of abusing minors when he was Archbishop of Munich and that had emerged in the report drawn up by the German Church on pedophilia. In a historic public statement, Benedict XVI stated: “I have had a great responsibility in the Catholic Church. All the more Great is my pain for the abuses and errors that have occurred during the time of my mandate in the respective places”.
Benedict XVI, the first pope to renounce the pontificate since the time of Gregory XII, at the beginning of the 15th century, has rarely left the leonine walls. Once to visit his inseparable brother in the hospital and in June 2020 when he traveled to Regensburg to see him again a few weeks before he died.