Pope Francis issued a blistering critique Monday of the Vatican bureaucracy that serves him, denouncing how some people lust for power at all costs, live hypocritical double lives and suffer from “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that has made them forget they’re supposed to be joyful men of God.
Francis’ Christmas greeting to the cardinals, bishops and priests who run the Holy See was no joyful exchange of holiday good wishes. Rather, it was a sobering catalog of 15 sins of the Curia that Francis said he hoped would be atoned for and cured in the New Year.
He had some zingers: How the “terrorism of gossip” can “kill the reputation of our colleagues and brothers in cold blood.” How cliques can “enslave their members and become a cancer that threatens the harmony of the body” and eventually kill it by “friendly fire.” About how those living hypocritical double lives are “typical of mediocre and progressive spiritual emptiness that no academic degree can fill.”
Oh come on your Holiness – you are supposed to criticize sinners, not the Vatican hierarchy, who some say are closer to God than the Pope himself.
Many people will be very very unhappy about this sort of thing. But its a moot point whether they are more displeased by this, or by the accounting microscope that Cardinal Pell is said to be putting all the Curial finances under.
On one level, some of these accusations are ones publicised in one way or another over the years.
On the other hand, it worries me when a superior criticises publicly his underlings who are more in the position of civil servants who with their required loyalty, are unable to publicly answer back.
And ultimately, in a hierachy such as as the Vatican, if there have been lapses, abuses and an unhealthy atmosphere, then just like on board a ship, it is the responsibility and failing of the Captain.
[blockquote] If somebody addressed a body to which I belonged, [i]just before Christmas[/i], in that sort of way, [i]with sixteen paragraphs of sustained and immoderate abuse[/i], I think I would …
I think someone should have a word with him.[/blockquote]
-[url=http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2014/12/christmas-address-to-curia.html] Fr John Hunwicke[/url]