Pope Francis said on Saturday that his advancing age and his difficulty walking have ushered in a new, slower phase of his papacy and he repeated that he would be ready to resign one day if serious health problems prohibited him from running the Church.
“I don’t think I can continue doing trips with the same rhythm as before,” he said in answers to reporters’ questions aboard the plane returning to Rome from a week-long trip in Canada.
For the past few months Francis, 85, has been using a wheelchair, a cane or a walker because of knee pain caused by a fracture and inflamed ligaments.
He walked with a cane to the rear cabin where reporters travel, but sat in a wheelchair for the traditional 45-minute post-trip news conference, the first time he has done so on his 37 international trips since he was elected pope in 2013.