Christmas is almost upon us, which for most Americans means family get-togethers and an abundance of food. It’s a time of year to reflect on all of one’s successes and failures, and also to think about ways to do better during the upcoming year.
For the Catholic Church, it’s a tradition for the Pope to perform ceremonies, including speaking to the church Curia. During his short time as Pope, Francis has used this event to induce soul-searching among the Vatican members, as he’s been harshly critical of the church’s behavior, and this year was no different.
As reported at the New York Post, the polarizing Pope Francis used his Christmas greeting as an opportunity to criticize his Vatican associates and bureaucrats in general. During his speech, the Pope lambasted what he called the “cancer” of cliques and how bureaucrats so easily become “corrupted” by ambition and vanity.
“Reforming Rome is like cleaning the Egyptian sphinxes with a toothbrush,” Francis told cardinals, bishops, and priests who work for him on Thursday. “You need patience, dedication, and delicacy.”
While Francis acknowledged that there were plenty of competent, loyal, and even saintly people who work in the Holy See, he called out those chosen to help him reform the Vatican’s inefficient and outdated bureaucracy, but who had shown themselves not to be up to the task.
When these people are then “delicately” removed, Francis said, “they falsely declare themselves martyrs of the system, of an ‘uninformed pope’ or the ‘old guard,’ when in fact they should have done a mea culpa.”
This kind of speech is par for the course when it comes to Pope Francis, although this year’s was actually tamer than previous ones. His most blistering critique came in 2014, when he listed the “15 ailments of the Curia” that some suffered, including the “terrorism of gossip,” ”spiritual Alzheimer’s,” and of living “hypocritical” double lives.
While it’s great for the Pope to ensure that church leaders are behaving properly and as spiritually pure as possible, the dismissals he referred to are quite controversial, as they’ve been held up as evidence he’s performing poorly as Pope.
In 2017, several major officials were forced out, including the Vatican’s first-ever auditor general, the respected No. 2 in the Vatican bank, and the Vatican’s hard-line orthodoxy watchdog.
While the internal schisms in the Vatican are a huge deal, Pope Francis’ message is still a relevant one. Corruption is a plague that we suffer from mightily in the US, and it would certainly be nice if the problem could be alleviated if just a little.
Source: New York Post