The news that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has died will have shocked no one. He was, after all, 95, and had been in declining health for at least a decade: his fragility was, in 2013, cited as the ostensible reason for his resignation, which came as a shock at the time. It had been, after all, 600 years since a pontiff had done such a thing. His successor, Pope Francis, alerted the world to Benedict's turn for the worse Wednesday, and a kind of death watch ensued.
