VATICAN CITY — Before any international trip, Pope Francis visits Benedict XVI, a key Vatican archbishop revealed, noting the good relations between the two and how Pope Francis is carrying forward Benedict’s vision.

Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, who serves as prefect of the Pontifical Household, spoke in an interview Aug. 15 with the Austrian Catholic press agency “Kath.net” while he was in the Diocese of Freiberg.

There he led the Aug. 13 pilgrimage to the shrine of Lautenbach, in the territory of Oberkirch, where Archbishop Gaenswein served as a parish priest shortly after his priestly ordination.  

Asked about the “two popes,” Archbishop Gaenswein underscored that “there is only one pope,” and then he stressed that he personally is acting as a “bridge” between Pope Francis and the pope emeritus, given his double charge as prefect and personal secretary of Benedict XVI.

“I live with Benedict XVI, I regularly meet with him in the morning for meals and during the evenings … so I work as a bridge, when Pope Francis and Benedict XVI want to exchange messages, give one a phone call to the other or even want to meet.”

Said Archbishop Gaenswein, “Usually, Pope Francis pays a visit to Benedict XVI before every international trip.”

Archbishop Gaenswein also stressed that Pope Francis’ papal emphasis is in keeping with the speech Benedict XVI delivered in Freiberg on Sept. 25, 2011. 

In that speech, Benedict XVI addressed the Church’s tendency to “become self-satisfied, settle down in this world, becomes self-sufficient and adapt herself to the standards of the world” and underscored that, “not infrequently, the Church gives greater weight to organization and institutionalization than to her vocation to open towards God, her vocation to opening up to the world towards the other.” 

These issues are recurrent themes of Pope Francis’ preaching, who also has often spoken about them, including during his voyage to South Korea. 

In his meeting with Korean bishops Aug. 14, Pope Francis underscored that “a prophetic witness to the Gospel presents particular challenges to the Church in Korea,” since the prosperous yet increasingly secularized and materialistic society may tempt pastoral ministers' lifestyle and mentality [to be] guided more by worldly criteria of success, and indeed power, than by the criteria which Jesus sets out in the Gospel.”