Benedict: “I’m fine. I live like a monk.”

A friend visited the retired pope and offered this report about his new life, according to Catholic World News:

“I’m fine. I live like a monk,” Benedict XVI told an old German friend who visited him recently at his new residence in the Mater Ecclesiae monastery on the Vatican grounds.

Manfred Lutz, a German scholar who is a member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity and the Pontifical Academy for Life, told Bild Zeitung that he found the retired Pontiff “physically weaker and a bit more stooped” than a few months earlier, but still mentally alert and cheerful. He said that the Pope-emeritus found himself thoroughly in accord with the theological statements of Pope Francis.

Benedict XVI described his current life as quiet and relaxed. “I read, I pray. I’m fine,” he said.