84-year-old Maybelline eyeshadow spokesperson and current head of the Catholic Church Pope Benedict XVI is closing in on his 85th birthday, and Pope-watchers say that he is growing increasingly frail and weak. He's reduced his schedule of public speeches, has stopped meeting visiting bishops individually, and has taken to using a moving platform to make the 100 meter journey to the altar in St. Peter's Cathedral.
"I was struck by what appeared to me as the decline in Benedict's strength and health over the last half year," Rabbi David Rosen told the AP. Rabbi Rosen, head of interfaith relations at the National Jewish Committee, sat near the Pope at a recent event in Assisi. "He looks thinner and weaker, which made the effort he put into the Assisi shindig with the extraordinary degree of personal attention to the attendees…all the more remarkable." Most papal doctors agree that 84-year-olds should only be attending receptions and the occasional box social. Soirees and shindigs, especially shindigs, are exhausting.
Benedict was the oldest Pope to be elected in around 300 years, and it's normal for an 84-year-old man to be winding down. And the Pope himself opened the door to his possible retirement, noting in an interview last year, "If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right, and under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign." Benedict would be the first Pope to do so since 1415 during the Great Western Schism, partly because the church's catechism may be confused with two popes living simultaneously, and party because the dental plan is so good.
Asked to comment on the Pope's medical condition, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombari demurred. "I'm not a doctor. I don't give medical bulletins," he said. "In this phase. At this moment." Well can he at least use his iPad?
