Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is lucid, alert and stable but his condition remains serious, the Vatican says, a day after it was revealed the 95-year-old’s health had deteriorated recently.

A statement from Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Pope Francis asked for continued prayers “to accompany him in these difficult hours.”

On Thursday the Pope revealed that Benedict was “very ill” and went to see him  at his home in the Vatican where he has lived since retiring in 2013, sparking fears that he was near death.

The Vatican later said Benedict’s health had deteriorated in recent hours but that the situation was under control as doctors monitored him.

Benedict in 2013 became the first pope in 600 years to resign, and he chose to live out his retirement in seclusion in a converted monastery in the Vatican Gardens. Few had expected his retirement — now in its 10th year — to last longer than his eight-year reign as pope.

Mr Bruni said Thursday that Benedict “managed to rest well last night, is absolutely lucid and alert and today, while his condition remains grave, the situation at the moment is stable.”

Responding to his call for prayers, the diocese of Rome scheduled a special Mass in honour of Benedict on Friday at St John Lateran, Benedict’s former cathedral in his capacity as the bishop of Rome.

Word of Benedict’s declining health immediately posed questions about what would happen when he dies, given the unprecedented reality of having a reigning pope presumably presiding over the funeral of a former pope.

Most Vatican experts expect any funeral would resemble that for any retired bishop of Rome, albeit with the caveat that there would be official delegations to honour a former head of state, as well as pilgrims from Germany — homeland of Benedict, the former Joseph Ratzinger — and beyond.

In Germany on Thursday, some of the faithful headed to the Chapel of Grace on the town square in Altoetting, a major pilgrimage destination a few miles from Benedict’s hometown of Marktl am Inn that he visited many times in his life.

Others visited the St Oswald church in Marktl, where he was baptised.

“I know that he has been preparing for his coming home in the eternal world,” said Herbert Hofauer, the retired mayor of the deeply Catholic town of Altoetting, who said he saw Benedict last in the spring.

“I believe that he is very calmly looking forward to this encounter.”