Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is “very ill” (molto ammalato), Pope Francis said at his weekly general audience in Vatican City this morning, asking for prayers for his predecessor, “who is supporting the church in silence.” Confirming “an aggravation” in Benedict’s “health condition,” Matteo Bruni, director of the Press Office of the Holy See, said that Francis visited Benedict at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in the Vatican Gardens after the general audience.
Benedict began to complain of respiratory problems shortly before Christmas, the Italian news agency ANSA reports. The Washington Post reports that a friend of his, speaking on condition of anonymity, corroborated that approximate timeline but did not know about the turn that Benedict’s health may have taken in recent hours. Benedict is 95 and has been pope emeritus longer than he served as pope.
“Of course time is not on his side,” the friend said. One can hope that timelessness is. Benedict wrote a book about it.