VATICAN CITY, JUNE 2, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI’s personal secretary and another of his close collaborators are marking their 25th anniversaries as priests.
Monsignor Georg Gänswein, the Pope’s personal secretary, and Monsignor Alfred Xuereb, both completed 25 years of priesthood at the end of May.
Georg Gänswein was ordained in Germany on May 31, 1984, and Alfred Xuereb in Malta on May 26 that same year.
To celebrate his anniversary, Monsignor Gänswein chose a motto from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, «Omnia possum in eo, qui me confortat» (I can do all things in him who comforts me).
Gänswein was born July 30, 1956, and has a doctorate in canon law from Munich’s University Ludwig Maximilians. He worked in the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, but in 1996, started to collaborate with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. During that time he also gave canon law classes at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.
Monsignor Gänswein began assisting Cardinal Ratzinger as his secretary in 2003, substituting now Bishop Josef Clemens, currently the secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
For his part, Monsignor Xuereb is marking his anniversary with a motto taken from the teaching of Benedict XVI: «Do not try to be understood by the world, but rather to be of Christ in the truth.»
The monsignor has been working in the papal secretariat since 2007.
