Pope Francis visited his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who has resided in a monastery within Vatican City since his historic resignation in 2013, to congratulate him on his 95th birthday, which will be next Saturday.
The Argentine pontiff came this afternoon shortly after 18.00 local (16.00 GMT) to the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in the Vatican to visit the pope emeritus, with whom held a “brief and affectionate” conversation, the Holy See reported this Wednesday in a statement.
Both prayed together and then Francis returned to his residence, Casa Santa Marta, also within the Vatican walls.
Benedict XVI (Marktl, 1927) will be 95 years old next Saturday, April 16, and will do so as in recent times, cloistered in the Vatican monastery where he has lived since May 2013, two months after giving effect to his resignation from the papacy.
Since then, Ratzinger has rarely broken the silence he promised to his successor and is accompanied by his secretary, Georg Ganswein, and by some collaborators who assist him on a daily basis.
Regarding his current state of health, Archbishop Ganswein recently revealed that “he is physically weak but his mind works very well”, in an interview with the weekly Oggi on April 6.
“It's methodical and his days haven't changed lately. Of course, his movements are slow and he needs more rest. In the morning he concelebrates mass at 7.30 and then listens to music on the sofa”, confessed his closest collaborator.
Even, he said, he has returned to take walks in the Vatican Gardens, where the monastery where he lives confined is built.
In 2020, his health aroused concern after he was diagnosed with “painful but not serious” herpes on his face, as confirmed in August of that year, the Holy See, arguing that this situation of pope emeritus was not “particularly worrying”.
Benedict XVI, the first pope to renounce the pontificate since the time of Gregory XII, at the beginning of the 15th century, has since left the Leonine walls only once, in June 2020, to visit his inseparable brother Georg Ratzinger, who is seriously ill, in Regensburg.
A month later, in July of that year, the elder brother of pope emeritus, also a priest, died at the age of 96.
Francis has always expressed his affection for Benedict XVI, whom he has described as a “wise grandfather” and whom he calls or visits for special dates.
Both staged the exceptional coincidence of two living pontiffs on December 8, 2015, embracing each other in St. Peter's Basilica for the beginning of the Jubilee of Mercy.
(With information from EFE)
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