Pope Francis welcomes ‘enemy’ from exile

The Pope will bring one of his most vocal enemies back from exile and give him a top job, adding a surprising twist to one of the bitterest Vatican rivalries.

Archbishop Georg Ganswein has been on the wrong side of Pope Francis. Picture:AFP

The Pope will bring one of his most vocal enemies back from exile and give him a top job, adding a surprising twist to one of the bitterest Vatican rivalries.

He is expected to offer Archbishop Georg Ganswein, 67, the position of papal nuncio, a role similar to that of ambassador, after stripping him of his Vatican job and ­exiling him to his native Germany.

“Pope Francis has decided to wipe the slate clean,” wrote papal biographer Elisabetta Pique, who reported the move in Argentinian newspaper La Nacion.

His first posting could be Lithuania, the Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported.

The offer from Francis, yet to be confirmed by the Vatican, is the latest chapter in the long-running clash between the Pope and Archbishop Ganswein, the former secretary to Benedict XVI who earned the nickname ­Gorgeous Georg.

Pope Benedict XVI is flanked by Archbishop Georg Ganswein during a weekly general audience at The Vatican in 2013. Picture: AP

After Benedict’s resignation in 2013, Francis confirmed Archbishop Ganswein as head of the papal household in a sign of continuity between papacies, only for the German to cause a rift by allegedly rallying the enemies of Francis’s liberal papacy.

In 2020, Francis removed the archbishop after he was accused of being behind a book, co-written by Benedict, defending priestly celibacy. The book was seen as a challenge to Francis, who was considering allowing married priests, prompting a scandal that forced Archbishop Ganswein to back-pedal and ask for Benedict’s credit as co-author to be removed.

When Benedict died in 2022, Archbishop Ganswein was undeterred, publishing a bombshell memoir claiming that Benedict opposed Francis’s relaxed stand on homosexuality.

Crucially, he also claimed Benedict had opposed the archbishop’s defenestration in 2020.

Six months later, an exasperated Francis ordered Archbishop Ganswein to return to Germany without a new job.

In December Archbishop Ganswein returned to Rome, offered to “collaborate” with the Pope and complained he needed a job, Pique reported.

Francis’s decision to bring him back into the fold could ­reflect the old rule of keeping your friends close but keeping your enemies closer, although Gerard O’Connell, Vatican correspondent for America magazine, disagreed.

“The Pope believes people make mistakes. If someone is willing to change, they should be given another chance,” he said.

The Times