Saying he was acting for the good of the unity of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has restored limits on the celebration of the Mass according to the Roman Missal in use before the Second Vatican Council, overturning or severely restricting permissions St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI had given to celebrate the so-called Tridentine-rite Mass.
Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the pope emeritus’ secretary, is denying media reports that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI lost his voice.
In more than seven years as leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has issued numerous new laws and guidelines for handling accusations of clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up by church officials.
In an interview with the German newspaper Südkurier, the personal secretary of retired Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Gänswein, also said that the pope emeritus’ medication has been reduced.
After rumors in the German press Aug. 3 suggesting Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was suffering from a facial infection, the Vatican has confirmed the retired pontiff is sick but insisted his condition is normal for someone his age.
An author with a long and close relationship to retired Pope Benedict XVI told a German newspaper that the 93-year-old retired pope is “extremely frail.”
At the request of retired Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, his name will be removed as co-author of a book defending priestly celibacy, said Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Vatican official who coordinated work on the book.
It is widely understood that Pope Francis is not a big vacation guy, preferring to spend his Summer in the Domus Sanctae Marthae where he lives. But as a heat wave breaks records across Europe, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI decided to visit the cooler papal estate of Castel Gandolfo on Thursday.
A large part of the reason news organizations are willing to pay the exorbitant costs of traveling aboard the papal plane with Pope Francis has nothing to do with the trip itself – it’s about the press conference at the end.
Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York and former head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) pro-life committee, delivered the keynote address at the Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life at Georgetown University on Saturday.
