VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Benedict’s former secretary has welcomed Pope Leo XIV’s papacy as bringing an end to “the season of arbitrariness.”
Speaking to Italian outlet Corriere della Serra, Archbishop Georg Gänswein offered his first comments on the newly elected Pope Leo XIV.
“When I saw him come out on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica I said to myself: ‘Optically and acoustically, this Pope arouses hope, hope, hope.’” Such were the words of Gänswein about Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, elected as Pope Leo XIV on Thursday evening.
Now serving as papal nuncio to Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, Gänswein was secretary to Pope Benedict XVI, and from 2012 through 2023 was prefect of the papal household, serving both Benedict and Francis.
Widely esteemed and beloved by long-serving Vatican employees who have been in situ prior to Pope Francis, Gänswein’s assessment of Leo pointed to the difficulties experienced under the last pontificate:
Now a new phase opens. I sense some widespread relief. The season of arbitrariness is over. We can begin to rely on a papacy that can guarantee stability and rely on existing structures, without overturning and upsetting them.
