VATICAN CITY: Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI came home to the Vatican on Thursday for the first time since he resigned Feb. 28, beginning an unprecedented era for the Catholic Church of having a retired pontiff living alongside a reigning one.
Pope Francis welcomed Benedict outside his new retirement home — a converted monastery on the edge of the Vatican gardens — and the two immediately went into the adjoining chapel to pray together, the Vatican said.
The Vatican said Benedict, 86, was pleased to be back and that he would — as he himself has said — “dedicate himself to the service of the church above all with prayer.” Francis, the statement said, welcomed him with “brotherly cordiality.”
A photo released by the Vatican showed the two men, arms clasped and both smiling, standing inside the doorway of Benedict’s new home as Benedict’s secretary looks on.
Unlike the live, door-to-door Vatican-provided television coverage that accompanied Benedict’s emotional farewell in February, the Vatican provided no television images of his return Thursday.
The low-key approach followed the remarkable yet somewhat alarming images transmitted March 23 when Francis went to visit Benedict at the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, where Benedict was living. In that footage, Benedict appeared visibly more frail and thinner only three weeks after resigning.
Thursday’s photo showed no obvious signs of further decline.
A Vatican spokesman has acknowledged Benedict’s post-retirement decline but has insisted he isn’t suffering from any specific ailment and is just old.
Benedict chose to leave the Vatican immediately after his resignation to physically remove himself from the process of electing his successor and from Pope Francis’ first weeks as pontiff.