Yes. pamac-cli vs. the gui’s. I could have been more thorough, thanks.
This might possibly be related:
That did the trick! In fact, pamac loaded immediately even before reboot. And no longer lots of journal messages.
The question (probably un-answerable) is: how did both get installed in the first place? Although this installation is several yeas old so gtk3 may have beeen the original and been badly superceded.
Many thans to all who replied here. Much appreciated! 
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Welcome. Although, please note that it was actually @dmt who instructed you to uninstall xdg-desktop-portal-gnome – twice – and @mithrial who mentioned they should not both be installed.
My contribution was only to summarize the process. Cheers.
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