Denver Newsroom, Feb 14, 2022 / 05:45 am
As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein has become an increasingly well-known presence in the Catholic world in recent years, especially since Benedict’s resignation in 2013.
The 65-year-old German not only speaks on Benedict’s behalf frequently, but has also staunchly defended the pope emeritus from criticism on numerous occasions, as he did most recently in an exclusive interview with EWTN detailing Benedict's response to a German law firm's report on the Church's handling of sexual abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Munich and Friesing.
Gänswein once described his role as Benedict’s personal secretary as analogous to a “pane of glass:” “I need to let the sunlight in, and the less the glass is visible the better. If it cannot be seen at all, it means it is fulfilling its task. … The less I am deliberately on show, the better.”
A native of the Black Forest region of Germany, Gänswein was born in 1956 and ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Freiburg im Breisgau in 1984. He is a Doctor of Canon Law, having earned his degree in 1993.