Rome CNN –
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is “lucid and alert” but his condition remains serious, the Vatican said Thursday in an update on the former pontiff’s health.
“He is absolutely lucid and alert and today, although his condition remains serious, the situation at the moment is stable,” Vatican press office director Matteo Bruni said in a statement.
“Pope Francis renews his invitation to pray for him and accompany him in these difficult hours.”
Pope Francis announced Wednesday that his 95-year-old predecessor was “very ill” after his health deteriorated.
“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.”
A Vatican spokesman confirmed later Wednesday that Benedict’s health had worsened “in recent hours” and that Francis visited Benedict at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in Vatican City.
In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world by making the almost unprecedented decision to step down from his position, citing his “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.
Benedict’s health has been in decline for some time. 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 has been a powerful force in the Catholic Church for decades.
Born Joseph Ratzinger in Germany in 1927, he was ordained a priest in 1951, named a cardinal in 1977, and later served as chief theological adviser to Pope John Paul II. He was elected as the 265th Pope in April 2005, after the death of John Paul II.
Benedict became pontiff at the height of the global sex-abuse scandal involving Catholic priests, as sex-abuse complaints and related lawsuits tore the church apart and threatened its moral standing throughout world
His 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 abuse by Catholic clergy was published in January.
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.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said many people would have “mixed feelings” about Benedict’s life. “Sadly, many victims of clergy abuse are not out of the woods in terms of healing their wounds and getting the justice they deserve,” SNAP wrote.