The health of Benedict XVI: how is the privacy of the pope emeritus in these delicate hours

The health conditions of Benedict XVI remain stable” sources of the Mater Ecclesiae monastery where the 95-year-old Pope emeritus is imprisoned, say surrounded by “family” which he chose.

At the moment there are no further details, except that of Benedict stay in your bedroomwith a clinical picture still serious, and that he concelebrated Mass together with Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, wearing a light stole over his shirt.

The Pope emeritus is under constant medical supervision.

Ratzinger’s health deteriorated just before Christmas, when developed breathing problems. But the situation only became public when Pope Francis asked the faithful for prayers for his predecessor during last Wednesday’s general audience.

“He is very ill”, said the current head of the Catholic Church, in information later confirmed by the Holy See.

According to the Vatican, the current problems are related to “advanced age”. Ratzinger became pontiff in 2005, succeeding the popular John Paul II. In 2013, he shocked the world by announcing his resignation, becoming the first Catholic leader to do so in more than 600 years.

The intimacy

Benedict XVI is surrounded in these delicate momentsof what was his “family” in his almost 10 years of retirement at the Mater Ecclesiae residence, in the Vatican gardens: the four women who always took care of him, the nurse Friar Eligio and his faithful secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein.

Since April 2, 2013, when Joseph Ratzinger returned to the Vatican as pope emeritus after spending time in the Castel Gandolfo residence after announcing his resignation on February 28, they did not part with him.

The four women are consecrated laymen of the “Memores Domini” institute, which belongs to the movement of Communion and Liberation. Their core business is household chores and the pope’s needstogether with his personal physician during his pontificate, the cardiologist Patrick Poliscaand the monk Fray Eligio, who helped him get up and go to bed every day, among other duties.

Discretion as a rule

If Ratzinger’s four caretakers excelled at anything, it was your discretion: they have been seen in public on a few occasions, only in a ceremony with the German pope in St. Peter’s square, where they got lost among the faithful.

They took care of covering all the needs of the pontiff emeritus in the Mater Ecclesiae house, where Benedict XVI did not have the “butler” or assistant he had when he was pontiff.

Despite his commitments as prefect of the Papal Household, a sort of head of protocol of the Holy See, a post he later abandoned, Gaenswein continued to live with Benedict XVI and accompanying him on his most important appointments or even during one of his walks, increasingly rare in recent times.

A nice monastery and two cats

For this residence, which was before the arrival of Benedict a charming little monastery surrounded by flowers and lemons, Benedicto’s two cats also roamed freely, “Fox” and “Contessina”, which the German pope took in his retirement.

There are many who have come to this residence to visit the pontiff, almost always scholars or journalists with a book to teach them or some other gift or advice.

Her photographs and “selfies” with the pope emeritus were the proof that served to silence the rumors that Benedict XVI was dead and the testimony that little by little was dying out.

Who has not stopped visiting despite his age, three years older, was his brother George, now deceased, and who has not missed a birthday of Giuseppe.

The only two times that Benedict XVI has left the Vatican, or at least the known ones, were when he went to the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome on January 4, 2014 to visit his brother hospitalized for medical tests.

Then in 2020, when went to Germany to say goodbye to Georg, who died shortly after.

Only recently, when his health was already very fragile, did he stop celebrating birthdays, an appointment that had become a tradition: the Bavarian beer mugs and typical music from the German region he interrupted Benedict XVI’s monotonous life of recollection and prayer at Mater Ecclesiae.

Those who have been able to visit him say that his totally white coat and cap, the color he would continue to wear after his resignation, were always hung in the atrium and prepared for the daily walk.

They also noted that Benedict XVI maintained an ancient Germanic custom, collected in the ancient Roman Ritual prior to the Second Vatican Council, for the day of the Epiphany and which was to write an inscription on the door with the first two numbers of the year , then “+C+ M+B+” (the Latin initials of Christus Mansionem Benedicat or God Bless this House) and finally the last two digits of the year.

Prayers in the grotto and a piano

When he was physically better, he went as far as the copy of the Lourdes grotto in the Vatican gardens where he stopped to pray in front of the virgin and, even if he later shortened his outings, he never stopped taking “his stroll” in a wheelchair.

He also had his piano brought to his home and when his hands responded he continued to play your favorite pieces by Mozart and Bach. He hasn’t been able to do as much as Gaenswein acknowledged in recent years, but he has always continued to listen to music on a daily basis.

Also continued readingfirst alone and then helped by his secretary at Mater Ecclesiae, where the Italian press arrived, but also the German dailies “Frankfurter Allgemeine” and “Die Welt”.

With information from Ansa and Cristina Cabrejas from Efe

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