Papal insider to blow lid on Vatican scandals

German archbishop Georg Gaenswein, who served Benedict for almost 30 years, has written a memoir.

Benedict lends an ear to Georg Gaenswein in 2010. Picture: AFP

A memoir by Pope Benedict XVI’s personal secretary, to be published within days, is expected to blow the lid on high-level ­Vatican mysteries, scandals and conflicts.

German archbishop Georg Gaenswein, who served Benedict for almost 30 years and is currently prefect of the papal household under Francis, has written Nothing but the Truth: My Life Beside Pope Benedict XVI’.

The book is a hot topic of speculation among cardinals and others arriving in Rome for the late pontiff’s funeral. Among them is Hong Kong’s Cardinal Zen, 90, who obtained the permission of a court to attend.

Cardinal Zen’s attendance is telling. He approved of Benedict’s efforts to improve relations with the Chinese, but stopping short of entering into any kind of compromising deal like that enacted under Francis and secretary of state Pietro Parolin in 2018.

According to Italian publisher Mondadori, after the death of the pope emeritus, “the time has come for the current prefect of the papal household to tell his own truth about the blatant calumnies and dark manoeuvres that have tried in vain to cast shadows on the German pontiff’s magisterium and actions.’’

Interest is intense about what the book reveals about Benedict’s thinking when he resigned and his opinion of some of his successor’s radical departures from tradition.

In an interview in German to promote the book, Archbishop Gaenswein said Francis’s crackdown on the traditional mass in his 2021 apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes hit Benedict ‘pretty hard’’. “I believe it broke Pope Benedict’s heart to read the new motu proprio, because his intention had been to help those who simply found a home in the old mass,’’ the archbishop said.

It was Benedict, in his 2007 apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, who recognised that contrary to popular misconception, the traditional Latin mass, while largely replaced with vernacular liturgies in 1970, was never been suppressed by the Second Vatican Council or any church authority. A revival of the old mass was turbocharged.

The publisher said the memoir would also cover the “Vatileaks” scandal, in which Benedict’s own butler leaked his personal correspondence to a journalist, clergy sex abuse scandals and one of the enduring mysteries of the Vatican — the 1983 disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee.

Based on the number of people filing past the late pope’s remains the Vatican is expecting a large crowd for the funeral. But sources told The Australian that curia officials were being “very bureaucratic’’ and unhelpful in not assisting priests who were eager to concelebrate the mass with the pope. In an interesting twist, US commentator Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option, wrote overnight about a man in Europe who received a letter from Benedict in 2015 and what it contained. The man intended to release it after Benedict’s death, Dreher wrote, and “it’s going to make world headlines’’.

The intrigue continues.