Retired Pope Benedict’s health is declining and he is under a doctor’s care, the Vatican said Wednesday.
Pope Francis visited his 95-year-old predecessor at a monastery on the Vatican grounds after his Wednesday public audience, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said.
Prior to that, Pope Francis, 85, urged the faithful to keep the retired pontiff in their hearts.
“I would like to ask you all for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict, who is sustaining the church in silence,” Francis said. “Remember him — he is very ill — asking the Lord to console him and to sustain him in this testimony to love for the church, until the end.”
The Holy See has acknowledged that Benedict’s heath has deteriorated over the last day.
“Regarding the health condition of the emeritus pope, for whom Pope Francis asked for prayers at the end of his general audience this morning, I can confirm that in the last hours, a worsening due to advanced age has happened,″ Bruni said.
Though his condition currently “under control,” Bruni noted Benedict is “continually monitored by his doctors.”
Next year will mark a decade since Benedict resigned from the papal seat in 2013. The move — a first since Gregory XII resigned nearly 600 years prior in 1415 — was attributed at the time to his “advanced age.”
Benedict has dedicated his post-papacy life to prayer and meditation, even as his health has declined.
Born Joseph Ratzinger, in Bavaria, Germany, Benedict entered the seminary at age 12. He was ordained in 1951 and appointed archbishop of Munich in 1977. Within a few years, he was at the Vatican.
Benedict was 78 when he was named pope in 2005, making him the oldest in 275 years and the first German to hold the position in nearly 500 years.
In his native Germany, the head of that nation’s bishops’ conference, Limburg Bishop Georg Baetzing, joined in Francis’ call for prayers for Benedict.
“My thoughts are with the emeritus pope,” Baetzing told German news agency dpa. “I call on the faithful in Germany to pray for Benedict XVI.”
What Benedict did — or didn’t do — while men of the cloth molested children has kept him in the public eye through his retirement.
An investigation commissioned by the Church in January revealed that Benedict was not only aware of clergy sexually abusing children when he was Munich’s archbishop, but that he neglected to act. Benedict served in the role of archbishop from 1977 to 1981, well before he was elected pope in 2005.
It wasn’t long before Benedict requested forgiveness for any “grievous faults” concerning his inaction, though he did not personally apologize to those affected in the four cases, nor did he admit to any wrongdoing.