America’s Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell published an article Thursday reporting that Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Pope Benedict’s longtime private secretary and former prefect of the papal household under Pope Francis, has been appointed by the pope to serve in the Vatican diplomatic corps as a nuncio.

Gänswein was not given a new assignment following the January 2023 funeral of Pope Benedict XVI and was eventually sent back to his native Germany without an official role in the Church. The 67-year-old archbishop, although loyal to Benedict, has never been seen as a committed supporter of Pope Francis and was occasionally suspected of undermining his papacy. Serving as Benedict’s gatekeeper, Archbishop Gänswein managed a schedule for the pope emeritus that might be described as a revolving door for Pope Francis’s critics — including Cardinal Robert Sarah, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, and author George Weigel.

One of the most inflammatory examples of this was the 2019 visit of the former president of the Pontifical Institute of John Paul II, Msgr. Livio Melina, shortly after his dismissal as a professor there by Pope Francis. The EWTN-affiliated Catholic News Agency (CNA) published a story about the meeting that included a photo of Melina with the pope emeritus. The article quoted an anonymous source “close to Melina” suggesting that the former pope had aligned with those opposed to Francis’s decision, saying that Benedict “wanted to receive Prof. Mons. Livio Melina at a private audience. After a long discussion of the recent events at the Pontifical Institute John Paul II, he granted his blessing, expressing his personal solidarity and assuring him of his closeness in prayer.”

Pope Francis may have been referring to this incident in his recent book El Sucesor, mis recuerdos de Benedicto XVI (The Successor: My Memories of Benedict XVI), when he said that Benedict’s secretary “sometimes made it difficult” for him, recounting “a case in which I replaced someone who was in charge of a department and the decision generated some controversy.” The pope continued, “In the midst of all this, [Gänswein] took the initiative to take him to see Benedict, because that person wanted to greet him. As the Pope Emeritus was very kind, he accepted. The problem is that the photo of that meeting was disseminated as if Benedict was contesting my decision” (pp. 70-71).

Gänswein’s relationship with Pope Francis was further damaged following an incident when it was revealed that Benedict had been used in a stunt meant to pressure Pope Francis as he was drafting Querida Amazonia, an apostolic exhortation that was expected to weigh in on the possibility of ordaining viri probati (men of proven virtue) to the priesthood in remote areas that lacked regular access to the sacraments. The Vatican was shaken on the morning of January 12, 2020, with the news that Cardinal Robert Sarah and Benedict had coauthored a book entitled From the Depths of Our Hearts, arguing against the married priesthood. Such a move was completely uncharacteristic of Benedict, who had previously always asked Francis for permission before publishing anything and had never taken part in such an ambush against Pope Francis.

Ultimately, Archbishop Gänswein fell on his sword by relaying Benedict’s insistent message that he had never agreed to coauthor the book. Cardinal Sarah and his US publisher, Ignatius Press, refused to accept Benedict’s clarification — saying that the pope emeritus fully consented to being a coauthor. Shortly thereafter, Francis stripped Gänswein of his responsibilities as prefect of the papal household, asking him to focus exclusively on his duties as Benedict’s assistant, while allowing him to retain his title and salary.

The event that seemed to seal Archbishop Gänswein’s exile was the publication of his book, Who Believes Is Not Alone: My Life Beside Benedict XVI. Announced while Benedict’s body was still lying in state and released the following week, this autobiographical account of Gänswein’s time at the late pope’s side offers what Pedro Gabriel described as adding “fuel to the fire” for Pope Francis’s critics. Pope Francis was even more critical in El Sucesor, saying, “It deeply saddened me: to publish a book on the day of the funeral that completely maligns me, telling things that are not true, is very sad” (p. 79).

Despite all this, Pope Francis seems to be offering Archbishop Gänswein another chance, appointing him to diplomatic service as a nuncio. This could be a good opportunity for Gänswein. He’s competent, below retirement age, and seems to be willing to serve. By contrast, Cardinal Müller is alleged to have refused a few opportunities after being replaced as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

A light hand

For all the ink spilled about Francis being a “dictator pope,” he has, in fact, been surprisingly indulgent to many in the Church who have actively worked to undermine him. In addition to Archbishop Gänswein, here are ten cases in which Pope Francis has shown patience and restraint far beyond what most of his predecessors would have shown:

1) In 2016, he allowed the four “dubia brothers” to retain the rank of cardinal despite their unprecedented act of insubordination when they released their dubia document through the press. This act was a clear violation of the Vatican instruction Donum Veritatis 30, which states that when theologians have doctrinal difficulties with a magisterial teaching, they “should avoid turning to the ‘mass media’, but have recourse to the responsible authority, for it is not by seeking to exert the pressure of public opinion that one contributes to the clarification of doctrinal issues and renders service to the truth” (emphasis added).

Bishop Frangiskos Papamanolis, President of the Bishops’ Conference of Greece, published an open letter reprimanding Cardinals Burke, Brandmüller, Caffarra, and Meisner in which he wrote, “Before publishing it and, even more, before writing it, you should have gone to see our Holy Father Francis and asked to be removed from the list of the College of Cardinals. Besides, you should not have used the title ‘Cardinal’ to give prestige to what you wrote, to be consistent with your conscience and to lessen the scandal you have given by writing as Cardinals.”

Francis, however, allowed them to remain in the college. In fact, one of them, US Cardinal Raymond Burke, remains eligible to participate in the next papal election until he turns 80.

2) Pope Francis allowed Cardinal Gerhard Müller to remain as CDF prefect for his full five-year term, effectively meaning the pope was left without a functioning doctrine chief for the first four years of his papacy. As I have written in the past, Francis and Müller never seemed to be on the same page, and often the German former prefect didn’t seem to understand the documents promulgated by Francis very well. After his term as prefect ended, Cardinal Müller joined the chorus of dissenting and conspiratorial antipapal voices. Yet Müller was still invited by the pope to the October 2023 synodal assembly, despite being a disruptive presence and disrespecting the pope’s request that synod delegates not speak to the media.

3) Pope Francis allowed disruptive figures such as Cardinals Burke and Sarah, as well as former Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Thomas Gullickson, to retain their ranks and titles until retirement age, despite numerous public attempts to undermine him.

4) Francis granted an indult to the Fraternal Society of St. Peter (FSSP), allowing them to continue to celebrate Mass according to the 1962 Missal. This permits the traditionalist society to ignore Traditionis Custodes, despite their continued refusal to concelebrate Chrism Mass with their local priests and bishops.

5) Pope Francis allowed Bishop Joseph Strickland to remain as Bishop of Tyler for years after his public actions had clearly descended into open dissent and conspiracism. In late 2020, I wrote an article about Strickland entitled, “A Dangerous Bishop.” By that point, Strickland’s anti-vaccine advocacy, interventions in politics, and conspiracist views were well-established. In my initial draft, I called on Pope Francis to remove him. I was persuaded by other contributors that doing so was outside the scope of WPI’s mission, so I removed it before publishing. I then waited three long years before Francis finally acted. Strickland was given years to correct his behavior and affirm the Magisterium. Some might argue that he was given too much time.

6) Pope Francis has turned a blind eye to Jan Paweł Lenga, the retired Archbishop of Karaganda in Kazakhstan, and Bishop René Henry Gracida, the 100-year-old former bishop of Corpus Christi. Both of these retired prelates have publicly taken sedevacantist positions, meaning that they do not believe Francis is a legitimate pope. Such a stance incurs excommunication latae sententiae (automatically) due to schism. Their sentences have been light. The local bishop of Lenga’s current residence in Poland has restricted him from saying public Mass. Gracida has received no discipline that has been shared with the public.

7) Pope Francis continued to support Cardinal George Pell, who had become a frequent critic of the pope, during the Australian prelate’s trials. Francis even called Pell “a great man” after his death, despite the revelation that Pell had penned a scathing attack against him under the pen name “Demos.”

8) Pope Francis has continued to allow outlets that do “the work of the devil” (such as EWTN and LifeSite) to keep their media credentials despite hostile questions at press conferences and consistently negative coverage of his pontificate.

9) The pope (along with the current DDF prefect, Cardinal Victor Fernández) bent over backwards to hammer out an agreement with the head of the African bishops’ conference, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, allowing the African Church to reject the implementation of a magisterial document (Fiducia Supplicans). Such an agreement is simply unheard of in recent decades.

10) Pope Francis endured eight years of nonstop public attacks, slander, and resistance from members of the traditionalist movement before offering any correction. When Francis finally abrogated Pope Benedict’s document Summorum Pontificum, which allowed wider use of the pre-Vatican II Missal, he had long been the target of countless attacks and accusations by dissidents who called him a heretic, a usurper, and a false prophet. Yet when Francis finally released Traditionis Custodes in July 2021, he did not pull the plug on the 1962 Missal entirely (although this would have been absolutely justified given the outrageous behavior of traditionalist leaders). Francis still carved out exceptions for use of the older form of the Roman Rite.

The costs

This has come at a price. Many of Francis’s critics — despite attacking him on matters of doctrine and discipline — would exploit his generosity and indulgence to argue that when Francis didn’t formally bring down the hammer (such as his years of not taking formal action against Burke or the traditionalist movement), he must approve of something. And then when he finally did act, they would cry foul.

Anyone thinking with the mind of the Church can see right through this deceptive rhetoric. And it seems that these critics are projecting their own reactionary personalities onto the pope.

As someone with some reactionary tendencies myself, there were many times I would be frustrated by the patience of Pope Francis and his lack of swift action in dealing with the likes of Burke, Strickland, and traditionalist dissent.

But Francis doesn’t work that way.

Our pope is an especially confusing and frustrating figure for those who haven’t yet come to realize a couple of things about him.

First, he is the opposite of a “reactionary” in most ways. He will sit on major decisions for months or years beyond their expected due date (such as the reform of the Roman Curia or the release of the McCarrick report). And (for better or worse) he often will not address issues in which the public outcry has become intense (such as the controversies surrounding Bishop Barros in Chile, Marko Rupnik, and the residential schools in Canada).

Second, he will do things spontaneously that seem out of character and excessive: granting the FSSP their Latin Mass indult, giving relics of St. Peter to representatives of the Eastern Orthodox Church, granting faculties to priests of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) priests to hear confessions validly, and to have their marriages recognized as valid.

People across the spectrum (with notable exceptions like Cardinal Burke in December and Volodymyr Zelenskyy) — even many who have been quite critical — have emerged from personal meetings with the pope with positive reactions: from Sister Jeannine Gramick, Whoopie Goldberg and Joe Biden to Javier Milei, Cardinal Zen, and Viktor Orbán.

So it seems fitting that Pope Francis has decided to place Archbishop Gänswein into diplomatic service as a nuncio. Hopefully he will make the most of this opportunity and will continue to learn from his mistakes.

(But please don’t send him to DC!)

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Image: 2023 photo of Archbishop Gänswein and Pope Francis. Vatican Media.