Former Pope Benedict XVI dies at 95

VATICAN CITY

The 95-year-old Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI passed away on Saturday at 9:34 AM in his residence at the Vatican's Mater Ecclesiae Monastery.

The Holy See Press Office announced that the Pope Emeritus died at 9:34 AM on Saturday morning in his residence at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, which the 95-year-old Pope emeritus had chosen as his residence after resigning from the Petrine ministry in 2013.

"With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 AM in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican. Further information will be provided as soon as possible.  As of Monday morning, 2 January 2023, the body of the Pope Emeritus will be in Saint Peter's Basilica so the faithful can bid farewell." 

Already for several days, the health conditions of the Pope Emeritus had worsened due to advancing age, as the Press Office had reported in its updates of the evolving situation.

Pope Francis himself publicly shared the news about his predecessor's worsening health at the end of the last General Audience of the year, on 28 December.

The Pope had invited people to pray for the Pope Emeritus, who was "very ill," so that the Lord might console him and support him "in this witness of love for the Church until the end."

Following this invitation, prayer initiatives sprung up and multiplied on all continents, along with an outpouring of messages of solidarity and closeness from secular leaders.

In the next few hours, the Holy See Press Office will communicate details for the funeral rite.

Benedict, who in 2013 became the first pontiff to resign in six centuries, has almost entirely withdrawn from public view.

The few photographs that have emerged have shown him to be in increasingly frail health.

He had cited his declining physical and mental health back in 2013 in his decision to become the first pope since 1415 to give up the job as head of the worldwide Catholic Church.

The German pope emeritus, whose real name is Joseph Ratzinger, has been living a quiet life in a former convent inside the Vatican.

His resignation created an unprecedented situation in which two popes — Benedict and his successor, Pope Francis — have co-existed within the walls of the tiny city state.

In April, Benedict's long-time secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, told Vatican News the ex-pope was "physically relatively weak and fragile", but "in good spirits".

Benedict was 78 when he succeeded the long-reigning and popular John Paul II in April 2005.

His papacy was beset by Church infighting and outcry over paedophilia.

He became the first pontiff to apologise for the scandals that emerged around the world, expressing "deep remorse" and meeting with victims in person.

But while he took key steps to tackling clerical child abuse, he was criticised for failing to end Church cover-ups.

The abuse scandal has returned to haunt him in retirement.

A damning report for the German church in January 2022 accused him of personally failing to stop four predatory priests in the 1980s while archbishop of Munich.

Benedict has denied wrongdoing and the Vatican has strongly defended his record.