Tag: pope benedict

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Just months after becoming the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign, reports are surfacing that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is in poor health with diminished stature and energy.

After a brief hiatus at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, Benedict returned to live in a converted monastery on the edge of the Vatican gardens last month.

Now that the cardinals have elected and installed their new boss, Pope Francis can get to work being the Roman Catholic pontiff, with his next order of business doing something no other pope has done in centuries: meet the guy he replaced.

Pope Francis is a humble man attuned to a simple life. He is concerned for the poor and is willing to touch them, sit with them and wash their feet. He prefers public transportation and is an ‘outsider’ in church politics.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI promised “unconditional” obedience to his successor during a farewell meeting with cardinals on Thursday (Feb. 28).

“Among you, in the College of Cardinals, there is the future pope, to whom I promise my unconditional reverence and obedience,” he said in the last official act of his pontificate before his resignation becomes effective at 8 p.m. on Thursday.

The latest speculation to fill the vacuum created by Pope Benedict’s shocking resignation is that his almost unprecedented action was prompted by the discovery of a gay “mafia” inside the Vatican.

Horrors! Right? Well, maybe not so much…

On Saturday, one day before Pope Benedict XVI's final blessing in St. Peter's Square, the Vatican lashed out at the media over what it called defamatory and false reports it says are an attempt to influence the election of the pope's successor, according to the Associated Press.

"Italian newspapers have been rife with unsourced reports in recent days about the contents of a secret dossier prepared for the pope by three cardinals who investigated the origins of the 2012 scandal over leaked Vatican documents," the AP reported.