He was the closest confidant of Pope Benedict XVI. After the death of Joseph Ratzinger, Georg Gänswein fell out of favor in the Vatican. Now he is starting a new life in Germany.
Breisgau instead of the Vatican. Kaiserstuhl instead of the papal throne. Roughly speaking, this is the new life of Georg Gänswein. The 67-year-old clergyman was once one of the most powerful men within the Catholic Curia, and as the closest confidante of the German Pope Benedict XVI. in Rome the threads. Now Gänswein is back in Germany. And he starts something like a new life here.
On Tuesday he held a mass in the Bavarian pilgrimage site of Maria Vesperbild, and was greeted with friendly applause by the numerous believers who appeared. Joseph Ratzinger, like Pope Benedict XVI. whose real name was, is revered by many people in Bavaria even after his death in December 2022. Gänswein felt some of this deeply felt affection.
At the behest of Pope Francis I, Gänswein returned to his home diocese of Freiburg in July 2023. Not entirely voluntarily, according to church circles. There was talk of “deportation”, of the fact that Gänswein had fallen out of favor with Francis I and that the incumbent Pope had “sent him into exile”. In fact, Francis I Gänswein had already given Gänswein an ultimatum in mid-May: he was to leave Rome by July 1st. No other tasks were assigned to him.
So Gänswein had to leave without a new office. A bitter blow for the man who, as Benedict XVI’s private secretary, had worked in the control center of the Catholic Church since 2005.
Francis I finally threw Gänswein out
But Gänswein was controversial. The clergyman, who is considered to be arch-conservative, even expressed his displeasure with Francis I, who had taken office as the reform pope, in a book entitled “Nothing but the Truth”. It was published in 2022, shortly after Joseph Ratzinger’s death. In it he complained, among other things, how the current incumbent was treating him and divulged internal information from inside the Vatican. It didn’t go over well there.
After Ratzinger’s death, Gänswein apparently made suggestions to the current Pope for his continued use. A post as nuncio in Costa Rica was under discussion, it said. He himself denied that. Also a job as a professor of theology. In the end, none of that came to be. Francis I, one must say, simply threw Gänswein out.
So now Germany again. Familiar environment. Gänswein enjoyed the performance in the Maria Vesperbild place of pilgrimage. was appointed archbishop in 2013. The 67-year-old has “found a piece of home” in the place where he had often vacationed in the past, where he can “recharge his batteries,” said pilgrimage director Erwin Reichart.
Everything back to the beginning
He now has enough time for that. In the diocese of Freiburg, Gänswein currently lives in the seminary and wants to help out when he is needed, as he recently said at a book launch: “I’m here now, I’m looking for a job, so to speak.”
help out Search work. They are unusual words for one of the formerly most influential men in the Church. In his sermon on the Catholic holiday of the Assumption, Gänswein spoke about the idea of heaven, the bodily resurrection. Even if the idea is ridiculed by others, it shows a central Catholic hope: to be fully accepted by God.
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