The rumor mill is going strong around the world, with talk in both Catholic and secular press that Pope Francis might soon join Benedict XVI as a “pope emeritus,” given the severe pain in his knee and other possible clues, especially a trip to the relics of the last pope to retire without a situation of schism or scandal.
But the Pope himself hasn’t given this indication, and instead, told Brazilian bishops in Rome for their regular visits on June 20 that he plans to keep going “as long as God allows it.”
The pain in his knee does not take away his good mood, the Archbishop of Porto Velho, Roque Paloschi, told Vatican News.
Archbishop Paloschi assured that the Latin American Pontiff is not planning to step down from the Throne of Peter as some media claim.
Instead, the prelate assured, the Pope is busy on several ecclesial fronts, but, “what comes out in the press does not cross his mind.”
Meeting with the 17 bishops of two of Brazil’s ecclesial regions, the Latin American Pope exhorted them to “shepherd without fear of facing the challenges that the present moment presents us” and “to denounce everything that tramples on the fundamental rights of the indigenous populations and the care of our common home.”
The good mood referenced by the archbishop was shown as the Pope received a colorful headdress from the faithful of Bishop Edson Taschetto Damian of the diocese of São Gabriel da Cachoeira in the northwest of Brazil and in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.
Is it a miter?, the Pope asked. “Imagine if I showed up to St. Peter’s in this,” he said, as the prelates chuckled.