Inflicting humiliation is part of Pope's Jesuit psychology

BUNTE met Archbishop Georg Gänswein. A conversation about the Synodal Way, Papal humiliation and Pope Benedict's role in the Church's abuse scandal.

"Germany," Georg Gänswein (66) tells BUNTE, "is not the yardstick for a living and powerful faith. Unfortunately." When BUNTE meets him in Altötting on the occasion of the publication of his book "Nothing but the Truth", the Archbishop criticises the reform movement "Synodal Path" in the Catholic Church in Germany as inadequate. He is of the opinion that the Synodal Path should be "administered as a medicine to the patient church in the abuse crisis". "But how can a flawed diagnosis lead to proper therapy?"

 

Georg Gänswein: "By no means am I unemployed".

BUNTE also wants to know whether he is the Vatican's most famous unemployed person. "By no means am I unemployed," he says. So no feelings of humiliation because Pope Francis dismissed him as prefect? He did not dismiss him, insists Gänswein, "but decided at the end of January 2020 that from now on I should no longer look after the Prefecture, but only look after Benedict as private secretary. That surprised me enormously and hurt me. And: "Subjectively, I felt this decision as a punishment. In the course of time, I came to the realisation that Francis acted out of his spirituality as a Jesuit, where humiliations play a special role to be judged spiritually." But Gänswein shows himself to be a fair loser: "Upper stings lower. I have accepted that." 

"Ratzinger was a pioneer in coming to terms with this evil"

Gänswein also takes a stand on the cases of sexual abuse by churchmen of the children entrusted to them - defending Pope Benedict XVI, who died in 2022: "Cardinal Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and later as Pope was a pioneer in coming to terms with this evil." And: "To accuse him of knowing and tolerating these acts is infamous and erroneous. It has an incendiary effect." 

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Cathcon: These are the highlights from an article to be released later this week