From the glossy covers to the tensions for the “two Popes”. So Georg prepares for farewell – Corriere.it

VATICAN CITY For years they have tended to call him Father Georg, even if not a religious like a Jesuit or a Franciscan but a secular priest who became archbishop, which should rather be named after Monsignor or maybe a simpler don. They call him that because at the beginning, when the first photos of that forty-year-old priest appeared, with the face of an actor, they compared him to Father Ralph of Bramble birds, a television meatloaf that was very popular in the eighties and featured a handsome priest, just like Georg Gnswein. It’s time to is approaching 67 years of age and is preparing to leave Rome to return, they say to Germany, in his diocese of Freiburg – he arrived at the Vatican in 1995, a year before Ratzinger called him to the former Holy Office – the times of the covers seem remote, of the popularity following the 2005 conclave as personal secretary of the new Pope Benedict XVI, of Donatella Versace who designed a fashion show explaining that she was inspired by him, a man who seeks inner quality and trains the muscles of the soul, of the answers that in 2007 he entrusted to Sddeutsche Zeitung, a little irritated by the matter of beauty but deep down amused by the love letters that arrived at the Vatican: Not something that hurts, indeed it flatters me, after all not a sin.

For him, too, the watershed was theredeclaration
of 11 February 2013, the announcement of the resignation of Benedict XVI. First there was the daily commitment as secretary, punctuated by the innocuous curiosities that are the George Clooney of the Vatican had attracted upon himself. Born on the southern slope of the Black Forest, in Riedern am Wald, the eldest son (he has two brothers and two sisters) of a housewife and a blacksmith in a family forge for seven generations, they recounted the passions common to his generation, the long curly hair of adolescence hated by the father, the music of Pink Floyd and Cat Stevens, the sports he continued to love, football, skiing, tennis, the first money earned as a postman, with a bicycle in a town in the Black Forest.

Until the vocation, theological studies in Freiburg and Rome, doctorate in Canon Law in Monaco. And the privilege of the years spent alongside one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century: Already as a high school student and then as a seminarian, I had read theIntroduction to Christianity of Ratzinger, and that common thread was enriched, told alCourier
: His theology nourished and permeated my heart and mind, like rain. Things have changed, and they’ve gotten tough, in the Vatican Monastery where the Pope Emeritus had retired hidden from the world.

After the Vatileaks storm, he was promoted by Ratzinger archbishop and prefect of the papal household shortly before his resignation. Bergoglio had kept him in office, a sort of bridge between the two Popes who write to each other and telephone each other. But Ratzinger’s every word filtered from the Monastery through Georg, he was the one who kept in contact with the outside world. So the secretary ended up being in charge or the scapegoat, depending on the point of view, of all the attempts of the traditionalist frond to pit Benedict against Francis: There are people who want to exploit my words to sow discord. After all, he continued to deny those who raved about forced resignations, all absurdities.

But the incidents along the way – unpublished by Ratzinger, prefaces – had become too many. At the beginning of 2020, a book by the cardinal was released in France Robert Sarah against any opening on priestly celibacy, double signature with Benedict, shortly before Francis gave his opinion (which, moreover, he did not do) on the requests of the Amazonian Synod. Gnswein said he had asked for Benedict’s name to be removed as co-author citing a misunderstanding, Sarah replied that they agreed. Francesco dismissed him, she remains prefect but from tomorrow she won’t go back to work, Gnswein reported in his latest book, Nothing but the truth, published the day after Benedict’s funeral. A book served, again, to the attempt postmortem
to use Benedict XVI against Francis. The last audience with the Pope was on 19 May. Already it transpired that Bergoglio wanted him to return to Freiburg. The newspaper Die Welt
he wrote that he will have to do it by July 1st. Nothing official, just wait: I’m not the one to decide. I am the one who is decided.

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