by Anura Guruge
on January 10, 2023
Per then ‘Cardinal Ratzinger‘ their initial connection was a mutual love for music, in particular the piano. They played the piano to each other & together. He referred to her as his muse. Way before he became pope, she moved into his apartment in Rome. It was rationalized as her being his housekeeper. She was, always, way more than that; the muse part closer to the truth. When he became pope she moved to the Papal Apartments and was officially part of the papal household. As started in the (way too brief) Wikipedia entry she even had a post in the crucially important ‘Secretariat of State‘.
She was his collaborator & confidante & has been openly credited as having edited the books he published during their association. She was in essence, the ‘Benedict XVI’ equivalent to “Pius XII’s“, ‘Popessa‘, ‘Pascalina Lehnert’, though their relationship probably wasn’t as long as the 41-years that Lehnert devoted to ‘her pope’.
During Benedict XVI’s papacy, Stampa was adept at keeping a low-profile vis-a-vis the media though she got implicated in the ‘Vatileaks‘ debacle.
She was never mentioned, as far as I know, as being a part of the ex-pope’s household in the converted monastery. She might have been, & it was kept secret.
For a decade or more Benedict had two very close confidantes both living with him — Stampa & his (other) secretary Georg Ganswein. Given that he was male, Ganswein never needed to be kept out of sight. Well it is well known that Georg was with the ex-pope right to the end & played a key role in the funeral. But then there was also these two ladies in black who sat in the front row, alongside Ganswein at the St. Peter’s Mass & at the private ceremony in the crypt. I am sure one of them was Stampa.
