Padre Georg, The Vatican Heart-Throb

Patta-thump, patta-thump went my heart as I stood on the altar at the Pope’s mass in Madrid.  There were tens of thousands of young people almost as far as the eye could see gathered for the mass and I was standing up on the altar with the entourage traveling with the Pope.  But that was not why my heart was beating.  The Vatican heart-throb, Padre Georg, was approaching the altar and his steely blues eyes were staring right at me.  It was a steamy hot August day and I shoved a sweaty lock back from my forehead and did my best to look seductive.  But how can one look seductive when you are dragging a lap-top computer and carrying a heavy tripod while dressed from head to toe in black?  Nevertheless, I had caught his eye.  He was walking towards me, his athletic stride clear beneath the long, black robes.  Yes, he was coming to talk to me.  I stared at him, frozen, a huge, sappy grin on my face. The crowd was cheering, singing and waving flags with wild enthusiasm, and here was the Vatican’s Prince Charming heading straight for me.  Was I dreaming?  Then suddenly he was in front of me, and just as I was about to swoon into his muscular embrace, he greeted one of the Vatican gendarmes (the Vatican’s security agents) standing behind me.  At that point I blushed a bright shade of fuchsia to match his belt, pulled out my notebook and began writing frentically.

Ok, ok, I just took a little poetic license there, I am trying to warm up for a future best-seller, “Fifty Shades of Fuchsia”.  I have been at a lot of long  Papal masses and audiences with Pope Benedict XVI and his loyal secretary so my imagination can be forgiven for running a little wild.

In April 2005 when Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, Padre Georg Ganswein became a world-wide star. Photographers covering the Vatican turned their long lenses from the man in white to the good-looking man in black at his side.  Web-sites and Facebook pages popped up dedicated to Padre Georg.

I thought the interest had faded a bit recently, but on January 23, Italy’s Vanity Fair put Padre Georg on its cover naming him the “George Clooney of St. Peter’s” and suddenly everyone was going google-eyed for Padre Georg once again.  So, I’ve decided to dedicate a post to him to try and figure out what is it about this man–besides his looks– that makes him a media magnet.

First a little background for anyone who hasn’t read the Vanity Fair article.  Padre Georg was born in 1956 in a small town in the Black Forest area of Germany, he is the oldest of five children.  As a young man he listened to Pink Floyd, the Beatles and Cat Stevens.  He played soccer, rode a bike and was a ski instructor.   In 1984 he was ordained in the Archdiocese of Freiburg, Germany.  He eventually made his way to Rome and in 1996 joined the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, run by his co-national, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.   He taught Canon Law at the University of the Holy Cross in Rome.   In 2003 Cardinal Ratzinger chose Padre Georg to become his personal secretary.

On April 19, 2005 Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, dragging his loyal secretary into the spotlight with him.  That is when it all began, a media feeding frenzy as everyone tried to snap a photo or get a comment from the Vatican’s heart-throb.

According to an article by Catholic News Service, Stanislaw Dziwisz, the long-time secretary for Pope John Paul II, gave a few helpful hints to Padre Georg warning him that he has to protect the Pope from “suffocation” under all the requests from people.

I have been covering the Vatican since 1994, I have been on at least 10 Papal trips accompanying Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI to places as far as Brazil, Egypt, Turkey, Cyprus and the United States, but I am not considered part of that elite group known as “Vaticanisti” who are journalists dedicated exclusively to covering the Vatican.  There are very few women “Vaticanisti” but one of the best is the glamourous, young “Vaticanista” for “Il Messaggero,” Franca Giansoldati.  I went to her for an explanation of why this stunningly handsome man continues to attract attention.

Franca explained it to me so effectively that I am just going to quote her, “Objectively speaking, he is bellissimo,” she said with a sigh, and then charged on,  “Then you put him into the world of the Vatican which is austere, where the men are old, professorial, and they seem like your grandfather.  In 2005 this man appears on the scene who is so handsome he seems like a Hollywood actor.  He is something unique, like a white fly.  He doesn’t seem to belong in the Vatican world.  If you took Padre Georg to Hollywood, probably no one would notice him, but in the Vatican world, he stands out.  On top of that he is what I would call “normal”.  He used to be a ski instructor, he plays tennis, he uses a cell phone and an ipad and he has both male and female friends. Add on top of that that he is a very traditional priest, rigorous and severe in his beliefs. So, to conclude, he has an unusual combination of features that make him interesting, his exceptional good looks, his appearance of being a modern man combined with his traditional, rigorous belief in Catholic doctrine.”

Among Padre Georg’s female friends is the Princess Alessandra Borghese, a journalist and author of several books, a descendant of Popes and a devout Catholic.  I asked her if she wanted to talk to me about Padre Georg for this post, but she politely declined.  She is not one of the ones who joins him when he slips out of the Vatican on a Tuesday to go skiing at Terminillo, a mountain resort a few hours outside of Rome.  According to the Vanity Fair article, he does that with some male buddies.

Probably the greatest test to Padre Georg as the Pope’s personal secretary has been the Vatileaks scandal which gripped the Vatican for most of 2012.  The scandal exploded when Italian investigative reporter Gianluigi Nuzzi published a book chock-a-block full of secret Vatican documents.  The book “His Holiness: Pope Benedict XVI’s Secret Papers” became a best-seller in Italy shortly after it was published.

The Vatican began its hunt for its deep-throat. Padre Georg eventually figured out the Pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele,  must be the guilty party when he discovered three letters in the book which he was sure had never left his office.

Last May the Vatican announced that they had arrested the Pope’s butler as the man behind the leaks. (See blog Post “The Pope’s Butler Did It”) and on October 6^th the Vatican opened the trial for the man behind the greatest Vatican security breach in modern times.

Last October the Butler took the stand and said he regularly photo-copied documents in the office he shared with Padre Georg and another Papal secretary.  He said “I did it while I was in the office, since I was free to move around and didn’t have any wicked aims. I did it calmly, even in the presence of others.” (See post “The Butler Takes the Stand.”)

As to be expected, a highlight of the brief trial was the appearance in the courtroom of Padre Georg who appeared uncomfortable in court and did not look at Paolo Gabriele. “It’s my first time,” he told the judges.  He then went on to describe his own professional habits noting that “I am a meticulous person, indeed, extremely meticulous.”

Just before Christmas, Pope Benedict XVI met with Paolo Gabriele in his Vatican jail cell and granted him a pardon.  Paolo Gabriele was later released from the cell and allowed to return to his wife and three children in their Vatican apartment.  The Vatican said it would help him find a home and job outside the Vatican.

 

But back to our heart-throb hero.  After pardoning the bad guy, the Pope had to reward the good guy.  On January 6^th,  in a solemn ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI promoted Padre Georg to Archbishop and Head of the Papal Household, a powerful and influential position in which he will organize the Pope’s audiences and meetings.

Vatican expert Andrea Tornielli, who wrote the article on Padre Georg for “Vanity Fair” told me he was surprised by all the attention his article generated.  “It is not his fault if he is so handsome,” Andrea told me.

Andrea told me he believes that Padre Georg has matured in his role as Papal secretary and has demonstrated that he is capable of exercising considerable power.  He said Padre Georg’s recent promotion is the Pope’s way of expressing all his trust in him following the Vatileaks scandal.

Andrea urged me to note the last quote in his article in which Padre Georg said, “Personally, I see my role in the service of the Pope as a window. The cleaner it is, the better it can do its job…it has to let the sunlight through, and the window does its job better the less it appears.  If you don’t even see the window, it means it is doing its job well.”

Transparent? The problem with the window metaphor is that it is impossible for anyone as good-looking as Padre Georg not to be noticed and now that he is probably one of the most powerful men at the Vatican after the Pope, it’s going to be even harder.