Vatican, Francis appoints apostolic nuncio Georg Gänswein, former secretary of Benedict XVI
He will be responsible for representing the Holy See in the Baltic countries
by Carlo Marroni
2' min read
2' min read
The appointment has finally arrived. A year and a half after the death of Benedict XVI, Pope Francis has appointed Monsignor Georg Gänswein , titular Archbishop of Urbisaglia, historical secretary of the German pope and for years Prefect of the Papal Household, a position from which he had been de facto ousted for years and more recently also formally.
The tensions after the publication of his memoir
.After just over a year in his home diocese of Freiburg, the German archbishop will therefore be the Vatican's representative in the three Baltic countries, an appointment that awaited the approval of the Lithuanian presidency, which has arrived. As mentioned after the death of Pope Benedict, in February 2023 Ganswein had ended his position as Prefect of the Papal Household; he had continued to reside in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, Ratzinger's residence since his renunciation, until June, when - by decision of Bergoglio - he returned to Freiburg, the German diocese of which he was a native. Reasons for tension between the German prelate and the Pope had not been lacking: from the case of the preface to Cardinal Sarah's book to the publication of his memoir, "Nothing but the truth", the anticipations of which had been circulated practically at the same time as Benedict's funeral, in early 2023.
The audience with the Pope in early January
The Pope had received Gänswein in a private audience on 3 January 2024 when he returned to the Vatican to celebrate a Mass on the first anniversary of the death of Benedict XVI, and the possibility of his appointment as nuncio probably emerged there (he had long since ruled out the possibility of a diocese in Germany, which would almost certainly have found opposition from the local communities). The nuncio in the three countries until last year was Archbishop Petar Rajič, a Canadian of Bosnian-Croatian origin, appointed on 11 March by the Pope as the Holy See's ambassador for Italy and San Marino. The See had therefore remained vacant until now.
The controversy over the Latin Mass as well
Francis' words on the prelate had been harsh: 'I was saddened that they used Benedict against me. Father Gaenswain's book was published on the day of his burial, and it seemed to me a lack of nobility and humanity,' said Pope Francis in the book-interview with Spanish journalist Javier Martinez-Brocal Il successore (Marsilio) just published in Italy. The book to which the Pope refers is 'Nothing but the truth', in which Ratzinger's historic secretary, who has been close to Benedict since 1992 after meeting him at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, recounted his years close to the Cardinal, later Pope. For the promotion of the book, Father Georg gave an interview to the German Catholic daily Die Tagespost, in which he affirmed that "Francis' grip on the Latin Mass has broken the heart of the Pope Emeritus".
