28, December 2022
Benedict XVI’s health worsening, Pope Francis asks for prayers 0
The Vatican on Wednesday confirmed that the health of ex-pontiff Benedict XVI, 95, has worsened in the last few hours and he had been visited by Pope Francis, hours after the current pontiff said his predecessor is “very sick” and asked for prayers.
“I can confirm that in the last few hours there has been a deterioration due to advancing age. The situation at the moment remains under control, monitored continually by doctors,” spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.
This came after Pope Francis said in a surprise announcement in Italian at the end of his weekly general audience: “I would like to ask all of you for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict, who, in silence, is sustaining the Church.”
“Let us remember him. He is very sick, asking the Lord to console and sustain him in this witness of love for the Church, until the end,” Francis said.
Until a few weeks ago, those who had seen Benedict said his body was very frail but his mind was still sharp.
One of the latest known photographs of Benedict was taken on Dec. 1, when he met the winners of a prize for theologians named after him. He was seated and looked exceptionally weak.
Since his resignation Benedict has been living in a former convent inside the Vatican gardens, with his secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, and a few other aides and medical staff.
Benedict announced his intention to resign on February 11, 2013, shocking a meeting of cardinals. He said he no longer had the physical and mental strength to run the Church.
He formally stepped down on February 28 that year, moving temporarily to the papal summer residence south of Rome while cardinals from around the world came to Rome to choose his successor.
Francis, the first pope from Latin America, was elected to succeed him on March 13, 2013.
While Francis has often praised the former pope, saying it was like having a grandfather in a home, the presence of two men dressed in white in the Vatican was at times troublesome.
Conservatives looked to the former pope as their standard bearer and some ultra-traditionalists even refused to acknowledge Francis as a legitimate pontiff.
Benedict, the first German pope in 1,000 years, was elected on April 19, 2005 to succeed the widely popular Pope John Paul II, who reigned for 27 years.
Cardinals chose him from among their number seeking continuity and what one called “a safe pair of hands”.
For nearly 25 years, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was the powerful head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, then known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).
Source: AFP and Reuters
31, December 2022
Pope Benedict XVI dies at 95 0
Former pope Benedict XVI has died at the age of 95, the Vatican announced Saturday, almost a decade after he became the first pontiff to resign in six centuries.
“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.
The German pope emeritus, whose birth name was Joseph Ratzinger, had been living a quiet life in a former convent inside the Vatican grounds since his shock decision to step down in February 2013.
His health had been declining for a long time, but the Vatican revealed on Wednesday that his situation had worsened, while his successor Pope Francis called for Catholics worldwide to pray for him.
His death brings to an end an unprecedented situation in which two “men in white” –Benedict and Francis – had co-existed within the walls of the tiny city state.
Benedict’s funeral will be held in St. Peter’s Square on Thursday, January 5 and will be presided over by Pope Francis, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Saturday.
In 2005 the body of John Paul II, the last pope to die, lay in state before a funeral mass in St Peter’s Square attended by one million people, including heads of state.
Scandal and in-fighting
Benedict had almost entirely withdrawn from public view, his health reported to be shaky and the few photographs that emerged of him exposing his frailty.
Back in 2013, he had cited his declining physical and mental health in his decision to become the first pope since 1415 to give up the job as head of the worldwide Catholic church.
Benedict was a brilliant theologian but his papacy was beset by Vatican in-fighting and a scandal over clerical sexual abuse of children that rocked the Catholic Church the world over, in which he was criticised for a lack of leadership.
The abuse scandal overshadowed his final months after a damning report for the German church in January 2022 accused him of personally failing to stop four predatory priests in the 1980s while archbishop of Munich.
He denied wrongdoing and the Vatican strongly defended his record in being the first pope to apologise for the scandals, who expressed his own “deep remorse” and met with victims.
Born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, in Bavaria, Benedict was 78 when he succeeded the long-reigning and popular John Paul II in April 2005, the first German pope of the modern era.
He later said his election felt “like the guillotine”.
Unlike his successor Pope Francis, a Jesuit who delights in being among his flock, Benedict was a conservative intellectual dubbed “God’s Rottweiler” in a previous post as chief doctrinal enforcer.
His papacy was dogged by controversy, from comments that angered the Muslim world to a money-laundering scandal at the Vatican bank and a personal humiliation when, in 2012, his butler leaked secret papers to the media.
Despite saying he would live “hidden from the world” after his resignation, he repeatedly intervened on key issues facing the Church through books, interviews and articles.
In January 2020, he expressed his opposition to allowing priests to marry. A year earlier, he blamed clerical abuse scandals on the 1960s sexual revolution and a collapse in faith in the West.
In an interview in March 2021, he said “there is only one pope”, but acknowledged “fanatical” supporters who refused to accept his resignation.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)