STORY: Pope Francis asked the faithful to pray for his predecessor Benedict XVI. called. The 95-year-old was “very ill,” said Pope Francis on Wednesday at the end of his general audience. He did not give any details about the health of ex-Pope Benedict. “I would like to ask you all for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict who is silently sustaining the Church. Let us remember him. He is very ill and asks the Lord to comfort him and to encourage him in his testimony of love for to support the Church to the end.” In 2013, Benedict became the first pope in 600 years to resign as head of the Catholic Church. Since then he has lived in seclusion in the Vatican. He justified his resignation with the fact that, due to his age, he no longer had the strength to fulfill papal duties. In a first reaction to the state of health of the Pope Emeritus, Cardinal Reinhard Marx said in Munich: “I just heard that this morning too. But for us, we are united in prayer. I last saw him in September. But if the Holy Father Francis tells us to be united in prayer, so we do that today in a very special way, with the young Christians.” Former Cardinal Josef Ratzinger was elected Pope in 2005 – the first German to head the Vatican in a thousand years. Previously, for 25 years, he was the influential head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Papal States’ most important doctrinal authority. In this capacity he was considered an uncompromising representative of the conservative wing in the Vatican.