A German cardinal who visited him said he was ‘shocked’ at how his state of health had deteriorated.
Joachim Meisner, the Archbishop of Cologne, visited Benedict on March 18, the day before Pope Francis succeeded him. It was during the time Benedict had been living in Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence outside Rome.
He had resigned from the Seat of St Peter on Feb 28. Cardinal Meisner told the German Catholic News Agency (KNA) he was shocked at how thin he had become.
He said: ‘He looked like he had halved in size. At first I did not agree with his resignation.
‘But when I saw him my reservations melted away. Mentally, however, he is quite fit, his old self.’
Officially, the 86-year-old resigned because of what is described as ‘a decline in vigour, both in body and spirit’.
For his part, Pope Benedict’s own resignation statement talked of his strengths being ‘no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.’
Paloma Gomez Borrero, an experienced Vatican correspondent from Spain, said that in the last 15 days the former pope had undergone a tremendous physical deterioration.
She said: ‘we won’t have him with us for very much longer’, The Daily Telegraph reports, although this has reportedly been dismissed as sensational by Vatican sources.
It has been said that Benedict is relieved to no longer be Pope. His brother told the paper that he still suffers the problems of the Church, but is ‘really relieved to no longer have the weight of the Church on his shoulders.’
Georg Ratzinger, 88, who is a priest, said his brother was not suffering from a particular illness.
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