“Vaticaneries”
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A week after the funeral of Benedict XVI. his private secretary Georg Gänswein publishes his memoirs, sulphurous and a bit petty, but without great revelations. Is there a Jago in this Bavarian priest?
We’ll have to wait a little longer for the French version. But on Thursday, exactly one week to the day after the papal funeral, the memoirs of Georg Gänswein, the private secretary of the late Benedict XVI, were published in Italy. Under the title, which can be translated into French as nothing but the truth, tells my life at the side of Benedict XVI. “Bel Giorgio”, as the Italian press called him in reference to his appearance as a church playboy, spent almost three decades behind the scenes with his mentor. Sulphurous confidences? Not so much, despite the hype surrounding the book even before the late pope was buried, when publisher Piemme announced the exposure of the “dark manoeuvres” perpetrating Benedict XVI’s pontificate. and Gänswein, left and right in the international press, by attacking François.
The publication of the memoirs of personal private secretaries is in itself a literary genre. Including the Vatican. The very influential Stanislaw Dziwisz, factotum of John Paul II, also wrote his memoirs. Just like the indispensable German nun Pascalina Lehnert, who served Pius XII for more than forty years. hated in the Roman Curia and fired overnight. But’