Vatican City | At the venerable age of 93 years and soon five months, the German Benedict XVI became on Friday the oldest pope in history, but with the unusual status of “pope emeritus”, making this record questionable since he gave up at his expense in 2013.
He was then the first pope to resign in seven centuries, after eight years of a pontificate undermined by a deep crisis, as he approached his 86 years.
Leaving his chair to the Argentinian Jorge Bergoglio, ten years younger, who became the new and unique pope reigning under the name of “Francis” without Roman numerals.
Born April 16, 1927, Benedict XVI dethroned the Italian Leo XIII on Friday, who died at the age of 93 in 1903, according to calculations by the Italian episcopate newspaper Avvenire and the magazine Famiglia Cristiana.
“34,111 days at the service of God, of the world and of the ecclesial community,” explains Famiglia Cristiana.
The Bavarian Josef Ratzinger, with his status as retired pope, can he still be part of such rankings ?, Other Vaticanists nevertheless wondered on Friday.
The age record of Benedict XVI is also to be put into perspective for another reason: experts point out that the age of the popes is not really reliable beyond 1400 years ago.
The previous record holder, Leo XIII, an Italian aristocrat who was born on March 2, 1810, is known to have written the first encyclical devoted to social problems.
Contrary to the short pontificate of Benedict XVI, the Italian had led the Catholic Church for more than 25 years, arriving behind Pius IX (1846-1878, or 31 years) and John Paul II (1978-2005, or 26 years)
Without forgetting the first Pope Pierre (30-64 or 67), whose reign would have lasted at least 34 years, points out the French historian Christophe Dickès.
The “emeritus” pope, reclusive in a Vatican monastery, often in a wheelchair, appears increasingly weakened. The author of a hundred books, however, is not intellectually diminished, regularly assert his relatives.
He had visited Bavaria in June 2020 at the bedside of his very ill 96-year-old brother, Georg, to whom he was very close, who died about ten days after his visit on July 1. Both had been ordained priests on the same day, in June 1951.
Shingles on the face
It was on his way to his native Bavaria – his first trip abroad since his renunciation – that Benedict XVI saw the first signs of painful shingles on his face.
“The pains manifested themselves after the death of the brother,” his faithful German private secretary, Mgr Georg Gänswein, told the German press a month ago, adding that the disease was easing.
Since then, no official information has filtered out on the evolution of his disease and his health.
His facial rash, a shingles which reached the right half of his face, “is a very painful but not fatal disease”, had underlined Mgr Gänswein, evoking “pains that I would not wish on my worst enemy”.
Shingles is caused by the herpes zoster virus, the same as chickenpox which can reactivate after a very long latency period.
Journalist Peter Seewald, biographer of the German Pope, sounded the alarm after a meeting Saturday August 1 with Benedict XVI to present his latest biographical work, indicating that the voice of the Pope Emeritus was “barely audible”.
In 1997, Benedict XVI had to have a pacemaker placed, while a cerebral hemorrhage in 1991 left him blind in his left eye.
Joseph Ratzinger taught theology for twenty-five years in German universities before being appointed Archbishop of Munich, then becoming the strict guardian of the dogma of the Church for another quarter of a century in Rome, before being pope for eight years (2005-2013), then an unusual “retired” sovereign pontiff.
His revolutionary renunciation was a personal decision linked to his declining forces and not to the pressure of scandals, he assured in a book of confidences published in 2016.
Joseph Ratzinger has always considered his election “a burden”, even though he has paradoxically spent the last four decades in the Vatican.