Denver Newsroom, Jul 5, 2022 / 18:10 pm
The personal secretary of Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, could not hold back tears as he recalled what the pope emeritus once told him about his journey to heaven.
The scene took place at the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich, Germany, during a June celebration organized by the Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI Foundation for the 95th birthday of the pope emeritus. The event was broadcast in German on EWTN.
Gänswein was visibly choked up as he recalled that Benedict XVI once told him that “I would never have believed that the last stretch of the journey that would take me from the Mater Ecclesiae monastery (where he currently resides) to the gates of heaven with St. Peter would be so long.”
Benedict XVI turned 95 on April 16, a little more than nine years after he resigned from the papacy on Feb. 28, 2013.