Rome  - Father Eberhard von Gemmingen is not just the editor- in-chief of the German department of Vatican Radio - he is also one of the first people to interview the then newly-elected Pope Benedict XVI in August 2005.

The man who has emerged among critics of the way the Vatican has been handling the whole affair involving the pardoning of Holocaust- denier Richard Williamson is, first and foremost, a pastor.

"Sometimes I feel a little like a parish priest," he confesses on his Vatican website, "because many listeners in Rome expect guidance and assistance on faith and understanding."

Von Gemmingen was born in 1936 the son of an aristocratic, mostly Protestant family in Bad Rappenau, in Germany's south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. But the outbreak of World War Two forced the family to move to a small village near Neuenstadt in Swabia.

"Thus I feel Swabian," he says these days. Von Gemmingen's father was killed fighting on the Eastern front during the war, and so his widowed mother sent young von Gemmingen to a Jesuit boarding school in a former Benedictine monastery at St Blasien.

Shortly before taking his Abitur school-leaving exams in 1956, von Gemmingen decided to become a Jesuit rather than take over the family farm. After studying philosophy and theology, he was finally ordained a priest in 1968.

Von Gemmingen has always concentrated on the grass roots. His first pastoral job was to spend two years in the ecumenical "action 365" group, dedicated to vigorously promoting Christianity. He is heavily involved in publicising help for the developing world, and travels frequently to India.

In 1980 he became the German Bishops' Conference's official representative at state broadcaster ZDF. In 1982 he finally took up a post at Vatican Radio, where he quickly became the head of the German service.

His priorities always lay with promoting understanding of the Church: "For me, it's all about what listeners understand of the Vatican and global church, and can get in tune with."

Today Father Eberhard von Gemmingen is the eminence grise at Vatican Radio. A man whose heart belongs not just to the pope, but who has an attentive ear for all questioning believers. (dpa)