"The Pope suffers from the sometimes closed attitude shown towards him in Germany," said Archbishop Jean-Claude Perisset, according to an interview in Die Zeit, Aug. 15th.
But he added that their rejection harms the critics more than the Pope.
"It's a great loss to the Catholic Church in Germany that they hear so little of him," he said.
Next month will mark the first anniversary since the Holy Father made his historic official visit to his homeland – a trip widely praised for his papal addresses in the German parliament and other official events, but which his critics maintained failed to electrify the people, particularly the young.
The nuncio, who is French-Swiss, went on to say the Pope views Germany’s critical stance as a specifically German phenomenon.
“Each comes with his own opinion and thinks he knows better,” the archbishop noted. “That is perhaps especially pronounced in Germany.”
In one of the few public remarks by a Vatican diplomat on the Vatileaks affair, Archbishop Perisset said the scandal is making diplomatic work “difficult”.
“The bad thing is that one can no longer trust those even in one’s closest circles,” he remarked in a separate interview with Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . “As nuncio, I’m going to have to think even more precisely about what I can put down on paper.”
But the 73 year old Holy See diplomat, who has been nuncio to Germany since 2007, said the leaking of confidential documents did not particularly surprise him. “People act as people, wherever people are,” he said.
He also denied one particular Vatileaks allegation: that Benedict XVI felt “piqued” by Angela Merkel’s call for the Pope to clarify his position on the Holocaust after he lifted the excommunication of SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson in 2009, and that he chastised the hierarchy for failing to take a stand against the “interference” of the German Chancellor.
“I only found out about this from the reports about Vatileaks,” Perisset said. “According to these, the Pope is to have asked me why I hadn’t protested against the words of the Chancellor, but he asked no such question, nor was there any instruction to protest.”
Rather, Périsset said he showed understanding for Merkel's criticism as relations between Christians and Jews are "always a very sensitive issue” for the German government and society.
He said he explained to the Chancellor “in a milder way” the attitude of the Holy See. “What was generally not taken note of at the time was that a few days after the Chancellor had made her criticism, she personally called the Pope to apologise," he recalled.
"So what was better in the end? A sharp note of protest to exert pressure, or the careful explanation of the facts, that leads to a positive reaction?”