BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Vatican denies Benedict XVI
has serious illness
Spanish reporter speculates about 'dramatic
deterioration' in the emeritus Pope's health
by Edward Pentin

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The Vatican reiterated Wednesday that Benedict XVI does not have any specific illness apart from the problems associated with old age after a Spanish author claimed the Pope Emeritus must have a grave illness after suffering a “dramatic” deterioration in his health.

Paloma Gomez Borrero, a correspondent for Spanish media at the Vatican, said Benedict XVI’s health had “dramatically diminished over the past 15 days,“ adding that one can only conclude “he must have something very serious.”

“We won't have him with us for very much longer,” she said in a report in the Spanish newspaper ABC. “It is unlikely that the Pope Emeritus will appear again in public,” she said. Gomez made the comments on Tuesday, at the launch of her new book on the conclave called “From Benedict to Francis”. [It is truly execrable for the woman to exploit Benedict XVI in such a cruel way for the purpose of calling attention to her book. She knows no better than any of us about the state of the emeritus Pope's health, yet she makes these wild statements, knowing they would make headlines for at least a few hours until her shameless mendacity would be exposed.]

The journalist added the Pope’s decision to resign was a "very bitter chalice" for him and that he showed "great humility" in doing so. [How can she presume to say it was a 'very bitter chalice' for him??? A man who makes a decision after consulting his conscience before God - not over a matter of days but perhaps months - cannot possibly think the decision he makes is 'bitter' in any way! Not once, by word or look, has Benedict XVI ever shown bitterness about his renunciation - no one who is bitter could show the unfailing serenity that Benedict XVI shows in his face and demeanor at all.]

But speaking to the Register Wednesday, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said that Benedict “has no illness” and that “the problems are those connected with age.” His comments are consistent Vatican statements on this issue since Benedict announced his resignation on February 11.

Many had noticed how much more frail the former Pope looked when he met Pope Francis last month, and that he had appeared to have aged considerably in the three weeks he had been out of office.*

Vatican doctors had noted with concern how he had become much thinner back in January, before he resigned. He had also begun to tire quickly and his personal physician, Dr. Patrizio Polisca, said his blood pressure was having strong fluctuations. He advised the Pope to avoid air travel.

The Vatican revealed in February that Pope Benedict had a pacemaker fitted a number of years ago and his biographer, Peter Seewald, confirmed he was unable to see out of his left eye, creating problems when walking, especially up and down steps.

Benedict XVI has used a walking stick for the past couple of years because of pain in his right hip and ankle.

In response to the speculation, the Vatican has regularly insisted that Benedict, who turns 86 next week, is not suffering from anything other than the physical trials of old age. So far, his plans to move into a converted convent in the Vatican at the beginning of May remain unchanged.


*[I would be the last person to dismiss any concerns about Benedict XVI's health, but I have remarked more than once since he announced his decision to give up the Papacy, about the effort he makes to appear 'normal' in public - just by comparing how we walks and looks in the moments preceding coming out in front of a crowd - as in Aula Paolo VI at his next to last GA, or coming out of the elevator at the Apostolic Palace the day he left it on February 28, or his walk to the balcony in Castel Gandolfo for his last public appearance as Pope, and then again, during his meeting with Pope Francis. He appeared perfectly 'normal' - i.e., his usual self - welcoming his successor at the heliport - but entering the chapel of the Apostolic Palace later, several steps behind Francis, he looked as effortful as he did on his way to the balcony on February 28. So to conclude that he must be suffering from a grave illness because of his apparent 'deterioration' in three weeks is completely irresponsible, and ignores the evidence that became apparent after February 11. I think it is because the new CTV director decided to show images of him 'behind the scenes' as it were, and therefore we got to see those poignant images of the visible toll his age has taken on him.

I felt that these images proved, if proof were needed at all, that he decided to bow out at the right time - before he would present to the world the image of yet another debilitated Pope, at a time when the enemies of the Church would have used that image to hammer home their message about a Church that was decrepit and in need of renewal. And believe me, the media wolves would never have given him the indulgence that they gave John Paul II for his illness...

Before Fr. Lombardi's statement to Edward Pentin, Damian Thompson ran this on his blog:

Pray for the health of
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI


I think all of us were distressed by the fragility of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI when we saw him greet his successor, Pope Francis. The footage was almost too painful to watch. [I disagree, but only because I had been prepared by earlier video clips before and on February 28 for the actual visible toll that age has taken on Benedict XVI. We should not have been surprised, after all, because his older brother Georg, who was always the sturdier of the two brothers, started showing his age-related decline at an age at least 3-4 years younger than Benedict XVI is now.]

Now, according to the excellent Fr Ray Blake, a Spanish newspaper says he is suffering from something "very severe", and that "we won't have us with him for very much longer". His condition has apparently continued to decline. [One worries when even experienced observers like Fr. Blake and Damian Thompson are flustered by statements that are obviously speculative, but their concern is obviously genuine and urgent.]

I thought twice about repeating this, but I'm sure Catholics and others would wish to pray for the man many of us regard as the most inspiring pope of modern times. No pontiff for centuries has written and preached so brilliantly about the relationships between liturgy, evangelism and the shape of history. If only he had been a younger man when he was elected to the chair of St Peter!


I especially invoke the intercession of the two heavenly figures whom I have been invoking for all health-related prayers - Padre Pio and John Paul II.

APROPOS... I would start a movement to beatify a living person - all right, I'm exaggerating - but I would light a candle if not offer a Mass for the first cardinal anywhere who will take the opportunity of this speculation about Benedict XVI's health to make a public statement offering his prayers and best wishes for the emeritus Pope and asking the faithful to devote a few seconds everyday to remember him in their prayers. That extraordinary cardinal would also be a candidate santo subito if he had the decency to add a simple statement to the effect that "We thank Benedict XVI for his service to the Church all his life but especially as our Pope for almost eight years".

I cannot get over my utter disillusionment - and rage, frankly - with all the cardinals without exception, who preceded even the media in willingly going into selective opportunistic amnesia about Benedict XVI, to the point of not even mentioning him at all since March 13, 2013. They have pointedly ignored the cue of the man they elected to be his successor whose first thought when appearing on the loggia on March 13, 2013, was to say a prayer for his predecessor - a gesture for which I will always have an extra reason to pray for him, Pope Francis, not just because he is our Pope.

Will someone please explain this obvious distancing from Benedict XVI by every Catholic priest and prelate who has ever been quoted in the media since March 13 - as if Benedict XVI were the devil himself that they must abjure and exorcise from their memory, let alone even approach with a ten=foot pole? Half of them he named cardinals - will they consider that a badge of shame now? Let me not even go into their encomiums for the new Pope that all but scream to the world -"Now we have the Pope we always needed - who will cure the Church once and for all of Curial bureaucracy and ineptitudes, of the IOR scandals, of pedophile priests and permissive bishops, who can purify the Church, who can lead the new evangelization, unify all Christians, and make friends with all Muslims Jews, Protestants and what have you", necessarily implying that the nameless, suddenly unacknowledged Pope who was in the Vatican earlier did nothing at all about all that! And since when did it become taboo for the 'Princes of the Church' to even mention the previous Pope, especially someone who is still very much alive?

For any priest, bishop, or cardinal to feign today, as they do, that Pope Francis is the first Pope ever to say the mission of the Church is to get out and evangelize is a sign of non compos mentis - as their selective collective amnesia is - because was that not Christ's mandate to his Apostles and therefore to the Church? What then are the Year of Faith and the New Evangelization and the continental mission for Latin America, but concrete initiatives to spur Christian mission today - not just in traditional missionary lands but everywhere, including the countries where Christianity had been most rooted?

With all due respect, Cardinal Bergoglio's four-point pre-Conclave intervention to the cardinals in General Congregation - and his follow-up statements subsequently as Pope - does give the impression that he thinks the Church has been seriously remiss in its work of evangelization and has not been doing anything about it. Which is wrong, and at the very least, unfair, because he knows very well from the experience of Latin America; to take the most obvious example, that the hemorrhaging of Church membership to new evangelical sects is not a trend that can be reversed overnight, and that task is precisely within the purview of New Evangelization.

And equally difficult to remedy overnight is to improve the overall quality of priests that have been formed since Vatican-II, many of whom chose the path of least resistance to neglect the study of philosophy, theology and liturgy (not to mention Latin) in the belief that they were free to preach and practice whatever their 'conscience' impelled them to do. Priests are, after all, the shock troops of the army of Christ, and if the shock troops are seriously deficient, it doesn't bode well for the mission.

How admirable if every priest immersed himself so much in the flock entrusted to him that he acquires the very 'odor of his sheep' - something they ought to be doing, anyway, with or without papal admonition - but in order to do that properly and well, should they not meet minimal criteria to make sure they teach the right things to the flock, not just listening to them, but guiding them properly along the way of Christ as the Cure d'Ars or Father Jorge Bergoglio would have done?

It's ill-conceived 'immersion' that led to the application of liberation theology to the poor communities of Latin America, to begin with - improperly formed priests began to think their mission was primarily political rather than spiritual, preaching Jesus as a social revolutionary not as the Son of God, seeking to be the social messiahs that even Jesus never pretended to be.

And yet these are the considerations that follow from the admonition to 'step out into the peripheries' which is not as easy as it sounds and as a totally a-critical reception of it seems to suggest.