Father Georg’s greeting to Pope Benedict XVI who considered him like a son

“The personal secretary, Monsignor Georg Gansweingreets the people who have come to pay homage to the Pope Emeritus”. Vatican News use these words as a caption for some images taken within the Basilica of Saint Peter. These words tell Father Georg in the role that in another funeral would have been that of a son. The images show him welcoming and accompanying the President of the Republic Mattarella and the President of the Council Meloni when they stop in prayer in front of the coffin of Pope Benedict XVI.

Father Georg was present at the moment of prayer before the coffin was transported to the basilica and was the first to follow him in the transfer. Remained in prayer next to the mortal remains of the pope emeritus, he kissed their hands intertwined with the rosary. They are images of faith, but also of familiarity, almost a filial relationship that bound Benedict XVI and his secretary.

Georg Gänswein was born on July 30, 1956 in Riedrn am Wald, Germany. He, the first of 5 children, was ordained a priest on May 31, 1984. He has been in the Vatican since the mid-1990s, where he collaborated for a long time with the then Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Joseph Ratzinger. Gänswein, a long-time professor of canon law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, was appointed secretary to Cardinal Ratzinger in 2003 and remained with him when he became Pope Benedict XVI and then pope emeritus. After having held for some years the dual role of secretary of the pontiff emeritus and prefect of the papal household, in recent years he has been almost exclusively next to pope Ratzinger. “I promise you my service, if you will, in life and in death. Throughout my life, until death or even in death”he had told him after the conclave.

His face became known at the time of Ratzinger’s election to the papal throne and his beauty. They have compared him to Father Ralph of Thorn Birds and he has been called the George Clooney of the Vatican, a fan of tennis, football and skiing. Over the years he has also been imitated a lot, by Fiorello and Crozza, and he was angry at first.

He had known about the renunciation for a few months as he told in an interview with Republic: «You can imagine that I thought carefully about this choice, I reflected, I prayed, I fought. And now I’m communicating a decision made, not a thesis to be discussed. It’s not one disputed question, she is determined. I tell her, and now she mustn’t tell anyone.’

It has since become somewhat spokesman of the pope emeritus: «From 28 February 2013, Benedict XVI resigned from the ministry of Bishop of Rome. The decision was so serious that at that moment I had imagined a life expectancy for the Pope Emeritus of no more than a year. When we left the Apostolic Palace together, the whole world witnessed how I couldn’t hold back the tears”.

With him he concelebrated Mass every morning and recited the Liturgy of the Hours, to then have breakfast and then lunch together. Monsignor Gänswein was close to the Pope Emeritus even during his only two departures from the Vatican in the last 10 years: a day’s vacation in Castel Gandolfo and the trip to Germany in July 2021, to say goodbye to his brother Georg for the last time. It was again Monsignor Gänswein who responded to the accusations of omitted supervision for cases of pedophilia in Germany when Ratzinger was bishop of Munich, saying that the pope emeritus was ready to face the judgment of a German civil court.

Not the only scandal that Benedict XVI has had to face. «But it is obvious that, as Pope Francis would say, the bad guy, the evil one, the devil doesn’t sleep. It is clear, always try to touch, to hit where the nerves are exposed, and it hurts more», says Father Georg. The documents stolen by the butler Paolo Gabriele, those of Vatileaks, disappeared from his desk and not from that of the Pope.

According to Monsignor Gänswein, however, the pontiff did not resign because of this and that he chose to call himself Pope Emeritus: «He decided so, personally. I think that in the face of such an exceptional decision, becoming a cardinal would have been unnatural. But there is no doubt that there has always been only one Pope, and his name is Francis».

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