Looked into all other similar postings, with some fairly old and not applicable, and one more recent and close to my issue, with no actual resolution.
Attempting to commit a local branch change, failing with the gpg signing, then running the following, to collect data maybe useful to those in the know:
platform: Monterey macOS (12.4)
% git --version git version 2.32.1 (Apple Git-133)
key expire time: 2032
% GIT_TRACE=1 git commit -S -m "my-local-branch"
Output: 17:03:31.062430 exec-cmd.c:139 trace: resolved executable path from Darwin stack: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/git
17:03:31.062692 exec-cmd.c:238 trace: resolved executable dir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin
17:03:31.063037 git.c:455 trace: built-in: git commit -S -m here_goes_branch_name
17:03:31.065514 run-command.c:667 trace: run_command: gpg --status-fd=2 -bsau here_goes_my_actual_key
error: gpg failed to sign the data
fatal: failed to write commit object
Any pointers?