Benedict XVI suffers from artrosis, a problem that affects fifty percent of people over the age of 60.
When walking long distances he feel pain in the right hip and he asked to use the mobile platform of his predecessor, Karol Wojtyla, a platform that is pushed through the Saint Peter’s Basilica central nave.
However, when his closest aides suggested him to bring out again the old gestatorial chair, which is the former ceremonial mobile throne carried over the shoulders, Ratzinger replied without hesitation, “No, thanks.”
On Saturday, October 15th, the Vatican’s spokesperson, father Federico Lombardi, informed in a nearly empty press room that the following day the Pope “on occasion of entering the procession from the sacristy” would have made use “of the mobile platform” already used by his predecessor.
Lombardi added that “the purpose is exclusively to reduce the Pope’s fatigue, similarly to what is done using the Popemobile when traveling outdoors and in Saint Peter’s square.”
Answering to a question, Lombardi added that there were no medical requirements for it and that the mobile platform would have also allowed the faithful to have a clearer view of Pope.
A few days later, the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, emphasized this specific aspect, as reported by L’Osservatore Romano: “You’ve seen him using the mobile platform, but it is only a method to make him more visible. Thus, this helps him but it also helps the faithful”.
However, there’s no doubt that the reappearance of the mobile platform raised concern: everyone, in fact, associate it to the image of Pope Wojtyla, old and sick, who started using it in the year 2000, when he was already experiencing serious deambulation issues, caused by the Parkinson disease affecting him and a failed surgery at the hip.
Until a few days ago, nothing had emerged concerning Ratzinger’s walking difficulties, also if the images broadcast by the Spanish TV during the World Youth Day, once the Pope entered the Madrid nunciature leaning on a white cane. A cane that in more than one occasion he uses also inside the Papal apartment.
“Benedict XVI, as it is possible to see,” explains a close aide of the Pope, “can walk and go up and down the stairs.”
However, he goes on, “he suffers from arthritis and this is why when walking long distances he feels pain at the right hip. The decision to use the mobile platform is only his: this way he feels safer and he can best manage his strengths.”
As soon as Ratzinger asked for the platform, a cart of sorts, pushed by the “Pope’s Chair Pushers”, his aides offered him an alternative, “Your Holiness, there is also the gestatorial chair, which allows the Pope to be seen from a distance...You could use that one!”
However, the Pope immediately refused with a kind, “No, thanks.” He preferred to stay with his feet on the ground.
The gestatorial chair was used last by Pope Luciani in September 1978. Paul VI, who continued using it also after having abolished the related Noble guards and the group of flabellum bearers, explained to his friend Jean Guitton the reasons for his decision, “I noticed that even if the chair is uncomfortable and gives me the feeling of being in the middle of the sea among the waves, it allows me to be closer to everyone. One is above everyone else in order to be better seen by people, without inequalities or privileges.”
Instead, Ratzinger did not feel like having it restored, foreseeing the controversies, which, however, did not fail to occur even just when people started seeing the platform: the Vatican correspondent for Tg1, Aldo Maria Valli, in a comment on the website vinonuovo.it, defined the decision as a “gesture that clashes and that has a profoundly anti-council value. It feels like a return to the Pope King who rules over the crowds and who detaches himself from the rest of humanity, making him appear like pagan deity.”