Seewald noted that the “personnel purge” completed the picture: “Many people who supported Ratzinger’s course and Catholic doctrine were ‘guillotined’.”
The German journalist especially disagreed with the treatment that Pope Francis gave to Bishop Georg Gänsweinwho was the long-time secretary of Benedict XVI and the prefect of the Papal Household of the Vatican for both Holy Fathers for several years.
“It was an unprecedented event in the history of the Church that Archbishop Gänswein, the closest collaborator of a highly worthy Pope, the greatest theologian who ever occupied the Chair of Peter, was shamefully expelled from the Vatican. He did not even receive a formal word of thanks for his work.”
Seewald noted that Bishop Gänswein’s was not an isolated case: “When a Ratzinger supporter like Cardinal (Raymond) Burke, 75, is stripped of his home and salary overnight without “No explanation, it is difficult to recognize Christian brotherhood in all this.”