By FRANCES D’EMILIO (Associated Press)
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The well being of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has worsened attributable to his age, and medical doctors are consistently monitoring the frail 95-year-old’s situation, the Vatican stated Wednesday.
Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni stated Pope Francis, who requested the devoted earlier Wednesday to wish for Benedict, went to go to his predecessor within the monastery on Vatican grounds the place the retired pontiff has lived since retiring in February 2013.
“Regarding the health conditions of the emeritus pope, for whom Pope Francis asked for prayers at the end of his general audience this morning, I can confirm that in the last hours, a worsening due to advanced age has happened,” Bruni stated in a written assertion.
“The situation at the moment remains under control, constantly monitored by doctors,” in line with the assertion.
At the top of his customary Wednesday viewers with the general public in a Vatican auditorium, Francis departed from his ready remarks to say that Benedict is “very sick” and requested the devoted to wish for the retired pontiff.
Francis didn’t elaborate on the situation of Benedict.
“I’d like to ask all of you for a special prayer for Emeritus Pope Benedict, who, in silence, is sustaining the church,″ Francis said in remarks near the end of an hour-long audience. ”I remind you that he’s very sick,” Francis stated.
“Let’s ask the Lord to consolation him and maintain him on this testimony of affection to the church to the very finish,″ Francis stated.
After the hour-long viewers, “Pope Francis went to the Mater Ecclesiae monastery to go to Benedict XVI. Let us all unite with him in prayer for the emeritus pope,″ Bruni stated.
Benedict, who was the primary pontiff to resign in 600 years, has develop into more and more frail in recent times as he devoted his post-papacy life to prayer and meditation.
When Benedict turned 95 in April, his longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, stated the retired pontiff was in good spirits, including that “naturally he is physically relatively weak and fragile, but rather lucid.”
Francis additionally paid a go to to Benedict on the monastery 4 months in the past. The event was Francis’ newest ceremony elevating churchmen to cardinal rank, and the brand new “princes of the church” accompanied him to the monastery for the transient greeting.
The Vatican launched a photograph on the time that confirmed a really thin-looking Benedict clasping Francis’ hand as the present and previous pontiff smiled at one another.
In his first years of retirement, Benedict attended a few cardinal-elevating ceremonies in St. Peter’s Basilica. But in recent times, he wasn’t robust sufficient to attend the lengthy service.
He was elevated to cardinal’s rank in 1977 by the then-pontiff, Paul VI. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the German prelate and theologian lengthy served because the Vatican’s doctrinal orthodox watchdog. He was elected pontiff in 2005.
Benedict startled a room filled with Vatican prelates by saying, in Latin, in February 2013 that he would step down as pope in two weeks. Some church traditionalists have been dismayed by his determination.
Francis has praised Benedict’s determination as a brave acknowledgement that bodily frailty now not left him capable of totally serve the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics.
Given his personal well being historical past, together with a knee ligament downside that has pressured him to make use of a wheelchair or a cane, Francis has stated that retirement is one thing he’d contemplate, if the state of affairs warranted it.
In an interview earlier this month with Spanish newspaper ABC, Francis revealed that shortly after fellow cardinals elected him to succeed Benedict within the papacy, he wrote a resignation letter to have readily available in case medical issues impeded him from finishing up his duties.
But in the identical interview, Francis performed down his mobility problem, saying one governs with the top, not the knee.
In Benedict’s native Germany, the top of that nation’s bishops’ convention, Limburg Bishop Georg Baetzing, joined in Francis’ name for prayers.
“My thoughts are with the emeritus pope,” Baetzing advised German information company dpa. “I call on the faithful in Germany to pray for Benedict XVI.”
In Berlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz “wishes the German pope, as we say, a good recovery and his thoughts are with him,” authorities spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann stated throughout a daily authorities information convention.
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Geir Moulson contributed from Berlin.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”