Rome CNN –
Pope Francis said Wednesday that his predecessor Pope Benedict is “very ill” and asked for prayers for the 95-year-old former pontiff.
“I want to ask all of you for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict who sustains the Church in its silence. He is very sick,” Francis said during his general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday.
“We ask the Lord to comfort him and sustain him in this witness of love to the Church until the end.”
In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world by making the almost unprecedented decision to step down from his position, citing “advanced age.”
Benedict’s announcement marked the first time a pope had resigned in nearly 600 years. The last pope to resign before his death was Gregory XII, who resigned in 1415 to end a civil war within the Catholic Church in which more than one man claimed to be pope.
In 2020, the Vatican said Benedict had suffered from a “painful but not serious condition”, following reports in the German media that he was ill.
Two years earlier, in a rare public letter published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Benedict wrote that “in the slow decline of my physical strength, inside I am on a pilgrimage home.”
Benedict’s legacy has been clouded by recent scrutiny of his time as archbishop of Munich and Freising, from 1977 to 1982, after a Church-commissioned report into clergy abuse was published in January catholic
The report found that he had been informed of four cases of child sexual abuse, including two during his time in Munich, but failed to act and had attended a meeting about an abusive priest.
Benedict later rejected these allegations, admitting that he had attended the meeting but denying that he had intentionally concealed his presence.