Pope Francis announced on Wednesday that his 95-year-old predecessor Benedict XVI. I am “seriously ill” and pray for the one whose resignation in 2013 surprised the world for health reasons.
“I would like to ask you all for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict. To keep his memory alive because he is seriously ill, to ask the Lord to comfort and support him,” the Pope said during the general audience.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, whose real name is Joseph Ratzinger, resigned in 2013 for health reasons and retired to the monastery in the Vatican Gardens.
After eight years of pontificate marked by numerous crises, Benedict XVI. Caught up in early 2022 by the drama of child crime in the church. When questioned by a report in Germany about his handling of sexual violence as Archbishop of Munich, he broke his silence to ask for “pardon” but assured that he had never covered up a child criminal.
His resignation, which was announced in Latin on February 11, 2013, was a personal decision linked to his declining strength and not to the pressure of scandals, the ex-Pope, a brilliant theologian, assured, but not with crowds satisfied, in a published confidentiality book in 2016.
With this gesture, unprecedented for 700 years, the first German pope of modern times paved the way for his dwindling successors. François, 85 and suffering from knee pain, left the possibility “open” himself.