- Feb 5, 2002
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“Obviously,” Archbishop Gänswein notes, “it is impossible to summarize the magisterium of Benedict XVI in a few pages.” But the “decisive core of this inheritance is the Christocentric witness he bears as a believer, in everything he did and said.”
I.
Joseph Pearce once remarked that he tends to look away from Vatican politics on the grounds that it is better not to peer too closely into the engine room of the Barque of St. Peter. Nevertheless, to judge from Archbishop Gänswein’s account of his several decades working at the Vatican, the mechanical bowels of that craft are enormously more interesting than they are dispiriting or disillusioning. Human beings have an innate and irrepressible curiosity concerning what goes on behind the scenes, behind closed doors, and downstairs of any institution, as the proved by the immense success of Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey—and I suspect that the Vatican is no different.
Gänswein is a German Prelate of the Church with a doctorate in canon law and an Archbishop since 2012, who entered the Roman Curia as a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 1995 and in 2003 joined the staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the invitation of Cardinal Ratzinger as the Cardinal’s personal secretary. Two years later the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Principal Private Secretary to His Holiness, and the following year Prelate of His Holiness. In December of 2012, Gänswein was made Prefect of the Pontifical Household, a position he held until shortly after Benedict’s retirement, during which time Gänswein continued as personal secretary to the Pope Emeritus until Benedict’s death on December 31, 2022.
Almost certainly, no man alive possesses a more intimate and detailed knowledge of this Pontificate than does Msgr. Gänswein, as his book suggests.
Continued below.
www.catholicworldreport.com
I.
Joseph Pearce once remarked that he tends to look away from Vatican politics on the grounds that it is better not to peer too closely into the engine room of the Barque of St. Peter. Nevertheless, to judge from Archbishop Gänswein’s account of his several decades working at the Vatican, the mechanical bowels of that craft are enormously more interesting than they are dispiriting or disillusioning. Human beings have an innate and irrepressible curiosity concerning what goes on behind the scenes, behind closed doors, and downstairs of any institution, as the proved by the immense success of Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey—and I suspect that the Vatican is no different.
Gänswein is a German Prelate of the Church with a doctorate in canon law and an Archbishop since 2012, who entered the Roman Curia as a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 1995 and in 2003 joined the staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the invitation of Cardinal Ratzinger as the Cardinal’s personal secretary. Two years later the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Principal Private Secretary to His Holiness, and the following year Prelate of His Holiness. In December of 2012, Gänswein was made Prefect of the Pontifical Household, a position he held until shortly after Benedict’s retirement, during which time Gänswein continued as personal secretary to the Pope Emeritus until Benedict’s death on December 31, 2022.
Almost certainly, no man alive possesses a more intimate and detailed knowledge of this Pontificate than does Msgr. Gänswein, as his book suggests.
Continued below.
Gänswein’s <i>Who believes Is Not Alone</i> is detailed, informative, never sensational
www.catholicworldreport.com
