Benedict XVI continues to be a trend around the world this Thursday, December 29, after it became known that his health had deteriorated.
Interest in learning about the pontiff emeritus pope strengthened after Pope Francis said on Wednesday in his usual meeting with parishioners to pray for him.
“I want to ask everyone for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who is silently supporting the Church: he is very sick, we ask the Lord to give him comfort and to be able to support him.” said the pope in the Vatican.
German Joseph Ratzinger, 95, left the papacy almost 10 years ago and lives in the convent Mater Ecclesiaein the same city.
The last time Joseph Ratzinger appeared in public was in August, when the Argentine went to visit him to let him know the names of the new cardinals.
The health of Benedict XVI worries everyone
This Thursday’s medical report says that Benedict XVI is in “serious but stable” health conditions and that he survived the night assisted by doctors and with his private secretary, say the Italian media, citing sources linked to the emeritus pope.
“Their reality has not changed since yesterday,” they told the Ansa agency from the monastery Mater Ecclesiae.
Along the same lines, the latest RAI publication says that the German Georg Gänswein, secretary of the emeritus pope, is still with him.
Officially, the Vatican has not ruled again on Benedict’s health. The latest version of the Holy See is the one given by the press office, in charge of Matteo Bruni, who had confirmed “a worsening” of his condition “due to advancing age.”
In Italy, the representatives in the Chamber of Deputies of Brothers of Italy, the party that governs that country, asked for the health of the emeritus pope.
“We ask for the health of the Holy Father emeritus Benedict XVI, undoubtedly the most important theologian of the post-enlightenment,” said Alfredo Antoniozzi.
The Diocese of Rome also joined the request to pray made by Pope Francis in the audience on Wednesday.
Benedict XVI was the first pope to voluntarily leave the pontificate since Gregory XII, at the beginning of the 15th century.
Since 2013, he has rarely left the monastery, once to visit his brother in hospital and in 2020 when he traveled to Regensburg to see him again, a few weeks before his death.
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