An Italian publisher has released early copies of a book by the late Pope Benedict’s secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein.

Archbishop Georg Gänswein‘s book, “Nothing but the Truth: My Life Beside Benedict XVI,” is filled with affection and admiration for Pope Benedict as a person, as a theologian and as pope.

The book includes the archbishop’s repeated insistence that Pope Benedict resigned of his own free will and fully aware of what he was doing in February 2013, and even addresses, one by one, some of what he calls the “absurd” theories that cast doubt on the validity of the resignation.

“Nothing but the Truth” is scheduled for release in Italian on Jan. 12 by Piemme, a publishing imprint that is part of the Mondadori company, but the text was released to reporters late Jan. 5 after Pope Benedict’s funeral.

Archbishop Gänswein wrote that Pope Benedict always was saddened by attempts to portray him and Pope Francis as opponents, “especially when the observation came from within the Vatican.”

The differences between the two, in style and theological approach, were “evident to all,” the archbishop wrote, but the problem was “not so much the existence of two popes, one reigning and one emeritus, as much as the birth and development of two cheering sections,” each claiming their pope was right and the other wrong.

For the most part, Archbishop Gänswein repeats information already available about the “VatiLeaks” scandal that saw Pope Benedict’s valet, Paolo Gabriele, be convicted of stealing and giving to a reporter private papal letters and documents — an affair he describes as “diabolical” — and details about what he calls the “bombshell” of the retired pope being listed as co-author of a book defending priestly celibacy by Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.

Cardinal Sarah’s book was published in January 2020 as Pope Francis was finishing his exhortation responding to the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, which had floated the idea of allowing the ordination of some married men for remote communities in the region.

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