Former Pope Benedict is “very in poor health,” says Pope Francis

Rome
cnn
—

Pope Francis has stated that his predecessor, Pope Benedict, the 95-year-old former pope who resigned 9 years in the past, was “very in poor health” on Wednesday following a deterioration in his well being.

“I want to ask you all for a particular prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict who sustains the Church in his silence. He’s very in poor health,” Pope Francis stated throughout his basic viewers on the Vatican on Wednesday.

“We ask the Lord to consolation and maintain him on this testimony of affection for the Church to the tip.”

A Vatican spokesman later confirmed that “there was a deterioration in the previous few hours because of the superior age of (Benedict)”.

“The state of affairs stays beneath management in the mean time and is being constantly monitored by his docs,” spokesman Matteo Bruni stated, including that after his basic viewers, Pope Francis visited his predecessor on the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in Vatican Metropolis.

In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world by making the virtually unprecedented resolution to go away workplace citing “superior outdated age.”

Benedict’s announcement was the primary time a pope had resigned in nearly 600 years. The final pope to resign earlier than his dying was Gregory XII, who left in 1415 to finish a civil battle throughout the Catholic Church wherein a couple of man claimed to be pope.

In 2020, the Vatican stated Benedict had suffered from a “painful however not severe situation” following studies in German media that he was in poor health.

Two years earlier, in a uncommon public letter revealed within the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Benedict wrote that “I’m inwardly on a pilgrimage dwelling, whereas my bodily energy is slowly failing”.

Benedict’s legacy has been tarnished by the current scrutiny of his tenure as Archbishop of Munich and Freising between 1977 and 1982, after a church-commissioned report into abuse by Catholic clergy was launched in January.

The report revealed that he had been knowledgeable of 4 circumstances of kid sexual abuse – together with two throughout his time in Munich – however had not acted, and that he had attended a gathering about an abusive priest.

Benedict later denied these allegations, admitting that he had attended the assembly however denied that he had deliberately hid his presence.