Nafter the death of Pope Benedict XVI. On New Year's Eve 2022, his longtime private secretary Georg Gänswein no longer worked in the Vatican. Pope Francis sent the curia archbishop back to his home diocese of Freiburg im Breisgau in the summer of 2023 without giving him a position there.
Almost two decades in an influential position in the Vatican, it was something of an exile for the ambitious and media-sensitive churchman. In his old homeland of the Black Forest, no one knew what to do with his exile from Rome. And not vice versa either.
Now a solution is emerging for Gänswein, who is due to retire from civilian work at age 67 but will not reach the normal retirement age for Catholic bishops in eight years. Francis appoints Gänswein as papal ambassador to Lithuania, responsible for all three Baltic states, can be heard in Rome: Ciao ciao, Breisgau, nuncio in Vilnius!