Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is reportedly "very sick" following a deterioration in his health, according to his successor Pope Francis.
“I want to ask you all for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict who sustains the Church in his silence. He is very sick,” Francis said during his general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday (December 28) via CNN. “We ask the Lord to console and sustain him in this witness of love for the Church to the very end.”
Matteo Bruni, a Vatican spokesperson, later confirmed to CNN that “in the last few hours there has been a deterioration due to the advancement of (Benedict’s) age."
“The situation at the moment remains under control and continually monitored by his doctors,” Bruni said, adding that Pope Francis visited Pope Benedict at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery following his general audience on Wednesday.
Pope Benedict announced his surprising decision to resign from his position due to "advanced age" in 2013, becoming the first pope to step down in nearly 600 years.
Pope Gregory XII, who resigned in 1415 to end a civil war within the Catholic Church that stemmed from multiple men claiming to be pope, was the last pope to step down prior to Benedict.
Benedict had suffered a "painful but not serious condition" in 2020, the Vatican confirmed at the time amid reports in German media that he'd become ill.
In 2018, Benedict wrote a rate public letter in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera revealing that "in the slow waning of my physical forces, inwardly I am on a pilgrimage toward Home."
Benedict was elected as pope in the 2005 papal conclave, which followed the death of his predecessor, John Paul II.