Benedict’s top aide says ‘gay lobby,’ Vatican bank had nothing to do with resignation

Benedict’s top aide says ‘gay lobby,’ Vatican bank had nothing to do with resignation

(ITALY)
Crux [Denver CO]

January 9, 2024

By Elise Ann Allen

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Pope Benedict XVI’s longtime private secretary, German Archbishop Georg Gänswein, spent the Feast of the Epiphany at a small parish in northern Italy, telling parishioners that Benedict was a man of prayer and debunking conspiracies behind his historic resignation.

Speaking to churchgoers at Sacred Heart Parish in Carnovali, Bergamo, on the Jan. 6 feast of the Epiphany, Gänswein described the late pontiff, who died on Dec. 31 of last year at the age of 94, as someone “whose vocation was that of a university professor and not an ecclesiastical career.”

“He was not born to exercise power,” Gänswein said, but insisted that once elected and faced with troubling issues in the church such as the pedophilia scandals, “He had a strong sense of responsibility: already as cardinal he saw that the big problem of the Church were not the persecutions or attacks from outside, but the filth that was produced…