Archbishop Georg Gänswein, long-time private secretary of Pope Benedict XVI, is to become nuncio to Costa Rica. This was reported by the Spanish portal "Religión Digital" on Tuesday afternoon. As the portal writes, citing sources in the Vatican, the Holy See informed the government in San José last week about the planned dispatch of Gänswein. The portal continues: "And if, as usual, there is no official response, Rome will consider the 'yes' granted and will soon inform about the future use of the man who has been a stone in Pope Francis' shoe in recent months."

Matthias Rüb

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta, based in Rome.

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After his audience with the Pope on March 4, Gänswein had said that Francis had not yet told him what task he should take over in the future. "The new task that awaits me is not yet known to me," Gänswein said on March 8 at an event in Munich, where he presented the German-language edition of his memoir, "Nichts als die Wahrheit. My Life with Benedict XVI."

The book climbed to the top of Der Spiegel's bestseller list shortly after its publication date. In Rome, it is said that Pope Francis had taken note of Gänswein's revelations about the sometimes tense relationship of the Pope Emeritus to his successor as well as about the "dismissal" of Gänswein as Prefect of the Papal Household by Francis with displeasure.

Current task: Papal executor

Gänswein's current task, according to his own words, is to obey the last will of Pope Benedict, who died on New Year's Eve 2022, as executor. This concerns Benedict's legacies in some bank accounts, which, according to current inheritance law, go to five "material heirs" of Joseph Ratzinger. It is said that the five cousins from Ratzinger's very large maternal relatives are reluctant to take up the inheritance because they fear claims for damages from abuse victims. The inheritance in Joseph Ratzinger's private accounts is not about royalties from his book publications, because these flow to a foundation dedicated to the work of the former Pope.

Costa Rica, Gänswein's alleged new field of activity, lies between Nicaragua and Panama and has a population of over five million. In a survey a few years ago, 52 percent of the population professed the Roman Catholic Church. Catholicism is the official religion of Costa Rica according to the constitution of the country known as the "Switzerland of Central America". The post of nuncio in San José is considered a kind of early retirement, because in Costa Rica – unlike in neighboring Nicaragua – no political upheavals or even crises are to be expected.

Also in Costa Rica there was abuse in the church

For Gänswein, a posting to Central America would rather mean a degradation, although the post of nuncio is significant. In August last year, however, the Catholic Church in the country was sentenced by a court to pay compensation of the equivalent of about 100,000 euros to a victim of sexual abuse. In its judgment, the court established the joint responsibility of the Archbishop of San José, José Rafael Quirós Quirós, as the highest employer of the institution in the Central American country. The current nuncio, Archbishop Bruno Musaro, will be 75 years old in June and has already offered the Pope his resignation because he has reached the age limit.

Curial Archbishop Gänswein was born in 1956 in Riedern am Wald near Waldshut in Baden-Württemberg and ordained a priest in 1984 in Freiburg Minster. He has been working in the Roman Curia in the Vatican since 1995. Since March 2003 he was private secretary to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and from April 2005 to Pope Benedict XVI. On 7 December 2012, Gänswein was appointed titular archbishop and prefect of the Papal Household by Benedict. The episcopal consecration by Pope Benedict XVI. took place on 6 January 2013 in St. Peter's Basilica. Gänswein remained even after the resignation of Benedict XVI. in February 2013 as private secretary at his side, until the death of the Pope Emeritus on 31 December 2022.