Rome (Reuters) – Pope Benedict XVI on Friday walked in public for the first time at the start of his trip to Latin America, in a sign of his growing physical weakness helped by a cane.
The Pontiff, who turns 85 next month, walked to a plane at Rome Fiumicino airport with a cane, said the Vatican reporters accompanying him on his visit to Cuba and Mexico.
The Pope last year began using a mobile platform to avoid too much walking on the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica.
The Vatican said that the Catholic leader was using the platform to avoid fatigue and that there were no major concerns about his health in general.
Benedict XVI intends to rest 24 hours after his arrival to Mexico to recover from lag, in contrast to the busy schedule of his predecessor John Paul II rather than his health deteriorate in the last years of his life.
The German Pope was 78 years old when he was elected to the maximum in the Catholic Church and has decided to keep a schedule less exhausting to maintain his health, while John Paul II was 58 at the start of his papacy.
John Paul II, who died in 2005, made 19 trips to Latin America, a region in overwhelmingly Catholic majority, the last of them when he was 82 years old.
The less active Benedict XVI, in April enters the eighth year of his pontificate, made his second trip to Latin America and the first to Spanish-speaking countries of the region after visiting Brazil in 2007.
(Report of Philip Pullella, written by Barry Moody.) (Edited by Marion Giraldo in Spanish)
