Word: vatican
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...typical day in the papal apartment: he and the Pope begin with breakfast, often with one or two other staffers, and Gänswein prepares documents for the papal signature and lays out the list of upcoming appointments. The pair typically take a daily stroll together after lunch in the Vatican gardens...
...person, Gänswein is affable and quick-witted - though always off-the-record - when encountering members of the Vatican press corps. In 1996, he began working in the key Vatican office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He has also worked as a Professor of Canon Law at Rome's Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, which is run by Opus Dei, though Gänswein is not a member...
...when Ratzinger's longtime personal secretary, Monsignor Josef Clemens, was appointed to a top position in another Vatican office, Gänswein stepped into the role of Ratzinger's right-hand man. It was not expected to be a particularly long assignment, as the Cardinal planned to return to his private studies in Germany after the conclusion of the papacy of the ailing John Paul II. Of course, fate had other plans, and when Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, Gänswein moved with him across St. Peter's Square to the office next to the new pontiff in the Apostolic Palace...
...nswein does not appear to have such sweeping authority. The real muscle behind the scenes is flexed by the No. 2 man in the Vatican hierarchy, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was Ratzinger's No. 2 in his old job at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. During the April 15-20 visit, the Italian Cardinal will also be frequently seen close to Benedict's side, at the White House, the United Nations and others appearances. Bertone stands out in a crowd as well: tall and bespectacled, with a gregarious disposition. But both Bertone...
...wings that lift the church. And yet a balanced takeoff has remained elusive. The U.S. is one of the few places where it seems to happen regularly. "America is simultaneously a completely modern and a profoundly religious place. In the world, it is unique in this," says a senior Vatican official. "And Ratzinger wants to understand how those two aspects can coexist." Almost all the things the Pope likes about us--our faith in the real value of plainspokenness, our pluralistic piety and even our wrangles around applying religiously grounded moral principles to increasingly abstruse science--can be understood...