VATICAN (CNS): Peter Seewald, who has had a long and close relationship to Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI was quoted in the August 3 edition of the Passauer Neue Presse, a German newspaper, as saying as saying that the 93-year-old retired pope is “extremely frail” and that while he is mentally sharp, his voice is barely audible.
Seewald, who has published four wide-ranging book-length interviews with the Pope Benedict, said he visited with Pope Benedict on August 1 to present him with a copy of the authorised biography, Benedict XVI: A Life.
Seewald said he visited with the former pontiff where he lives, in the Mater Ecclesia monastery in the Vatican Gardens in the company of Archbishop Georg Ganswein, Pope Benedict’s personal secretary.
However the Vatican press office reported late on August 3 that Archbishop Ganswein insisted there was no reason “for particular concern” over the retired pope’s health “other than that of a 93-year-old who is overcoming the most acute phase” of shingles.
Pope Benedict had travelled to Regensburg, Germany, in late June to visit his brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, who was ill and died on July 1.
Passauer Neue Presse also reported that, according to Pope Benedict’s spiritual testament, he wants to be buried in the grotto under St. Peter’s Basilica in the chapel where Pope St. John Paul II was originally laid to rest before being moved upstairs to the St. Sebastian Chapel after his beatification in 2011.
