(LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Georg Gänswein has commented on Pope Francis’ most famous remarks about homosexuality.

In an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica, which coincided with the first anniversary of Pope Francis’ death on April 21, 2025, Gänswein was asked about the late pontiff’s comment about homosexuals.

“If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?” Francis said during an airplane interview in July 2013.

“The phrase you mentioned is surprising, to say the least, coming from a pope,” the archbishop said, implying that he himself did not agree with Francis’ words.

Gänswein, the former private secretary of Pope Benedict XVI, who abdicated in 2013, has been known as the German pontiff’s loyal friend and a critic of Francis, with whom he had an adversarial relationship after Benedict’s death in December 2022.

In May last year, Gänswein said he was hopeful that Pope Leo XIV’s papacy would bring an end to“the season of arbitrariness” and that he would “guarantee stability,” implying that Francis had not.

READ: Abp. Gänswein details strained relationship with Pope Francis amid release of Benedict XVI homilies

Gänswein, who now serves as apostolic nuncio to the Baltic countries, was also asked about Francis’ restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass. He replied: “In my book I wrote that…Benedict’s heart [had] become heavy.”

While Pope Benedict did not say anything publicly at the time, Gänswein has said that the German pope believed the restrictions were a mistake.

Benedict’s private secretary once again stressed that the late Pope was not forced or pressured to resign his office, but did so as a free and conscious decision.

Gänswein insisted that neither “Vatileaks,” “so-called homosexual lobbies,” nor “anything else” was the cause for the Pope’s resignation in 2013.

His statements appear to run contrary to those of former apostolic nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who recently accused Hillary Clinton and John Podesta of causing the shutdown of the Vatican banking ATMs that were thought to have pressured Benedict to resign.

READ: EXCLUSIVE: Vatican court confirms ongoing investigation into validity of Pope Benedict’s resignation

From 2013 until 2020, Gänswein served as Francis’ Prefect of the Papal Household.