Former Pope Benedict XVI, who led the Catholic Church from 2005 until his resignation in 2013, has died at the age of 95.
Tributes have poured in from around the world after the Pope Emeritus passed away on Saturday morning.
On Wednesday, Pope Francis revealed that his predecessor was “very ill” and went to see him in his home in the Vatican Gardens.
Pope Benedict had fallen ill in recent days (via Reuters)
Benedict’s health had been deteriorating over recent days but the Vatican said on Friday that he was well enough to participate in a Mass in his room.
He was being tended to by a team of doctors and his papal family, including his secretary Monsignor Georg Gaenswein. Benedict’s body will lie in St Peter’s Basilica from Mond
A statement from Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said this morning: “With pain I inform that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesia Monastery in the Vatican. Further information will be released as soon as possible.”
Benedict resigned as Pope in 2013, the first in 600 years to do so. A conservative defender of Catholic tradition, Benedict had been living in the Vatican since then and continued to wear the white dress of papacy.
Reacting to the news of his death, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, said Benedict was “one of the great theologians of the 20th Century”.
Benedict had resigned from the role in 2013 (AFP via Getty Images)
He added: “He was through and through a gentleman, through and through a scholar, through and through a pastor, through and through a man of God – close to the Lord and always his humble servant.
“Pope Benedict is very much in my heart and in my prayers. I give thanks to God for his ministry and leadership.”
Prime minister Rishi Sunak tweeted: “I am saddened to learn of the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. He was a great theologian whose UK visit in 2010 was a historic moment for both Catholics and non-Catholics throughout our country.”
Pope Benedict, whose birth name is Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, was born to devout Catholic parents in Germany in 1927.
His father was a policeman in Hitler’s Germany, whose outspoken criticism of the Nazis forced to the family to move several times. Young Ratzinger was conscripted into the army as a teenager but deserted towards the end of the war.
He already had a desire to enter the priesthood at an early age and continued his education in a seminary after the war. He was ordained as a priest in June 1951 and began a long career in academic, teaching theology at a number of universities in Germany.
Benedict, who was seen as a deeply conservative pontiff, had an eight-year papacy that was marked by missteps and a leaks scandal.
Former Pope Benedict (R) with his successor Pope Francis in 2016 (REUTERS)
One of the most significant events of his papacy, the 2021 ‘Vatileaks’ scandal, saw Benedict’s butler Paolo Gabriele leak secret documents that revealed corruption and feuding within the Vatican.
Child abuse scandals also hounded his papacy and Benedict was quicker to discipline the offenders than his predecessor John Paul II.
Benedict ordered an inquiry into abuse in Ireland, which led to the resignation of several bishops, and he also disciplined the late Father Marcial Maciel – a notorious paedophile who abused at least 60 boys.
Benedict did however face criticism over his handling of abuse claims in the German church. In 2022, a report into abuse within Germany found that Benedict had failed to take action in four cases when he was Archbishop of Munich between 1977 and 1982.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The health of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has worsened due to his age, and doctors are constantly monitoring the frail 95-year-old’s condition, the Vatican said Wednesday.
Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said Pope Francis, who asked the faithful earlier Wednesday to pray for Benedict, went to visit his predecessor in the monastery on Vatican grounds where the retired pontiff has lived since retiring in February 2013.
“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 in a written statement.
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“The situation at the moment remains under control, constantly monitored by doctors,” according to the statement.
At the end of his customary Wednesday audience with the public in a Vatican auditorium, Francis departed from his prepared remarks to say that Benedict is “very sick” and asked the faithful to pray for the retired pontiff.
“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.”
After the hour-long audience, “Pope Francis went to the Mater Ecclesiae monastery to visit Benedict XVI. Let us all unite with him in prayer for the emeritus pope,″ Bruni said.
Benedict, who was the first pontiff to resign in 600 years, has become increasingly frail in recent years as he dedicated his post-papacy life to prayer and meditation.
When Benedict turned 95 in April, his longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, said the retired pontiff was in good spirits, adding that “naturally he is physically relatively weak and fragile, but rather lucid.”
Francis also paid a visit to Benedict at the monastery four months ago. The occasion was Francis’ latest ceremony elevating churchmen to cardinal rank, and the new “princes of the church” accompanied him to the monastery for the brief greeting.
The Vatican released a photo at the time that showed a very thin-looking Benedict clasping Francis’ hand as the current and past pontiff smiled at each other.
In his first years of retirement, Benedict attended a couple of cardinal-elevating ceremonies in St. Peter’s Basilica. But in recent years, he wasn’t strong enough to attend the long service.
He was elevated to cardinal’s rank in 1977 by the then-pontiff, Paul VI. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the German prelate and theologian long served as the Vatican’s doctrinal orthodox watchdog. He was elected pontiff in 2005.
Benedict startled a room full of Vatican prelates by announcing, in Latin, in February 2013 that he would step down as pope in two weeks. Some church traditionalists were dismayed by his decision.
Francis has praised Benedict’s decision as a courageous acknowledgement that physical frailty no longer left him able to fully serve the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics.
Given his own health history, including a knee ligament problem that has forced him to use a wheelchair or a cane, Francis has said that retirement is something he’d consider, if the situation warranted it.
In an interview earlier this month with Spanish newspaper ABC, Francis revealed that shortly after fellow cardinals elected him to succeed Benedict in the papacy, he wrote a resignation letter to have on hand in case medical problems impeded him from carrying out his duties.
But in the same interview, Francis played down his mobility challenge, saying one governs with the head, not the knee.
In Benedict’s native Germany, the head of that nation’s bishops’ conference, Limburg Bishop Georg Baetzing, joined in Francis’ call for prayers.
“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.”
In Berlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz “wishes the German pope, as we say, a good recovery and his thoughts are with him,” government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann said during a regular government news conference.
