The Vatican’s two physical centres of supreme power are the papal apartment and the Secretariat of State. Both are located in the third loggia of the Apostolic Palace but are being driven apart by the Vatileaks scandal.
Benedict XVI’s right hand man Mgr. Georg Gaenswein is the “king of the castle” in the papal apartment while Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone sets the rules in the Holy See’s “control room”.
At the beginning of Benedict XVI’s papacy, when Bertone substituted Angelo Sodano it seemed as though the papal apartment and the Secretariat of State had reached a peaceful co-existence, a sort of silent agreement.
But then came a series of contested nominations, such as those for the Archdioceses of Turin and Milan.
In both cases, Bertonian candidates were rejected in favour of those preferred by the Italian Bishop’s Conference team lead by Cardinals Bagnasco and Ruini who saw the Pope’s secretary, Fr. Georg, as an excellent support figure, apt for creating a power balance with the Secretary of State.
This detachment between papal apartment and Secretariat of State is partly responsible for triggering surprise appointments and unexpected decisions.
The rift was worsened by certain slip-ups such as the revocation of the excommunication of Lefebvrian bishop Richard Williamson, who denied the Jewish Holocaust.
When the British prelate’s statements to the press about the Holocaust had been circulated, it was Cardinal Bertone who sped up the pardoning process, despite Fr. Georg’s resistance. In the Holy See’s modern leadership system, Popes generally reign but do not govern.
It is therefore paramount that there is occasional power delegation and that the sovereign pays due attention to his closest collaborators.
It is important that during his papacy of reform and “purification”, the theologian and pastor Joseph Ratzinger listens to both his personal secretary and to his “prime minister”.
The both secretly have their swords crossed and are involved in an internal power struggle.
This battle is renewed, though not visibly, each time the Pope needs to make an important decision.
This chill in relations between the papal apartment and the Secretariat of State was previously seen during an extremely dramatic and delicate phase of 20th century church history: the recovery period following the attempt against John Paul II’s life right in the midst of the Cold War.
During this nightmare, a protective “Polish belt” formed around the papal apartment. It was made up of his secretary Fr. Stanislao Dziwisz, his childhood friend Wanda Poltawska and a number of Polish nuns.
Karol Wojtyla was in and out of Rome’s Gemelli hospital but he eventually got rid of his fever and when he returned to the Vatican, there was a fear that his medication would be poisoned. They were therefore analysed by a trusted pharmacologist.
The “Polish belt” trusted no one in the Curia and feared the rise of a fifth column and complicity in the attack.
On the one side were the apartment’s Poles who wanted a head-on collision with the communist regime and Solidarność funding. On the other was the Secretariat of State bolstered by Agostino Casaroli, an advocate of ostpolitik and foreign affairs minister, Achille Silvestrini.
Both were convinced of the need to keep dialogue open with the Eastern bloc.
Those months of recovery remain the most mysterious and stormy in Wojtyla’s long pontificate.
According to Cardinal Silvestrini, during that long period which dragged on until the end of 1981, he and the Secretary of State, Casaroli, would only meet the pope once a week to inform him in person of the most urgent issues in the ordinary administration of the Roman Curia.
And yet two fundamental and controversial decisions came out of this silent phase of Wojtyla’s pontificate: the placement of the Company of Jesus under the administration of an external commissioner and the appointment of U.S. bishop, Paul Casimir Marcinkus as pro-Governor of the Vatican City State.