Michael Kelly
Retired Pope Benedict XVI is pictured with Ratzinger prize winners Joseph H. H. Weiler, a professor of law at New York University School of Law, and Jesuit Fr Michel Fédou, professor of dogmatic theology and patristics at the Centre Sèvres of Paris, at the Mater Ecclesia monastery at the Vatican on December 1, 2022. Photo: CNS/Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation Saying that retired Pope Benedict XVI was “very sick,” Pope Francis asked people to offer special prayers for him.
“I would like to ask all of you for a special prayer for emeritus Pope Benedict,” Pope Francis said at the end of his weekly general audience today (Wednesday).
The 95-year-old retired Pope “is sustaining the Church in silence,” Pope Francis said. “Remember him. He is very sick.”
“Ask the Lord to console him and sustain him in his witness of love for the Church until the very end,” Pope Francis said.
A spokesman for the Holy See Press Office said that in “the last few hours there has been a deterioration due to advancing age.
“The situation remains under control, constantly monitored by doctors,” the spokesman added.
On February 11, 2013, Pope Benedict announced that he would retire effective from February 28 that year. He spent the first several months of his retirement at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo before moving into the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican Gardens where he has lived since.
The retired Pope has looked increasingly frail, but as recently as December 1 the foundation that promotes his theological work released photos of him meeting with the two winners of the ‘Ratzinger Prize’. He also met in August at the monastery with Pope Francis and the new cardinals Pope Francis had just created.