Former Pope Benedict is 'very sick', Pope Francis says - CNN

Rome CNN  — 

Pope Francis said Wednesday that his predecessor Pope Benedict is “very sick” and asked for prayers for the 95-year-old erstwhile pontiff.

“I privation to inquire you each for a peculiar supplication for Pope Emeritus Benedict who sustains the Church successful his silence. He is precise sick,” Francis said during his wide assemblage astatine the Vatican connected Wednesday.

“We inquire the Lord to console and prolong him successful this witnesser of emotion for the Church to the precise end.”

In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the satellite by making the astir unprecedented determination to resign from his position, citing “advanced age.”

Benedict’s announcement marked the archetypal clip a pope had stepped down successful astir 600 years. The past pope to resign earlier his decease was Gregory XII, who successful 1415 discontinue to extremity a civilian warfare wrong the Catholic Church successful which much than 1 antheral claimed to beryllium pope.

In 2020, the Vatican said Benedict had suffered from a “painful but not superior condition,” pursuing reports successful German media that helium was ill.

Two years earlier, successful a uncommon nationalist missive published successful the Italian paper Corriere della Sera, Benedict wrote that “in the dilatory waning of my carnal forces, inwardly I americium connected a pilgrimage toward Home.”

Benedict’s bequest has been clouded by caller scrutiny of his clip arsenic Archbishop of Munich and Freising, betwixt 1977 and 1982, aft a Church-commissioned study into maltreatment by Catholic clergy determination was published successful January.

The study recovered that helium had been informed of 4 cases of intersexual maltreatment involving minors – including 2 during his clip successful Munich – but failed to act, and that helium had attended a gathering astir an abusive priest.

Benedict aboriginal pushed backmost against those allegations, admitting helium had attended the gathering but denying helium intentionally concealed his presence.