Pope has more harsh words for errant clergy in Christmas message
POPE Francis issued a stinging new critique of the Vatican’s top administration yesterday, saying “traitors” stood in the way of his reforms and made any change as hard as cleaning Egypt’s Sphinx with a toothbrush.
For the fourth year running, Francis used his annual Christmas greetings to the Roman Catholic Church’s central bureaucracy, or Curia, to lecture the assembled cardinals, bishops and other department heads on the need for change.
“Reforming Rome is like cleaning the Sphinx of Egypt with a toothbrush,” he said, quoting a 19th-century Belgian churchman.
The phrase did not evoke much laughter when the pope read it in the frescoed Clementina Hall of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.
Since his election as the first Latin American pope in 2013, Francis has been trying to reform the Italian-dominated Curia to bring the church’s hierarchy closer to its members, to enact financial reforms and guide it out of scandals that marked the pontificate of his predecessor, former Pope Benedict.
But he has encountered resistance, particularly as some departments have been closed, merged or streamlined.
Francis said some in the bureaucracy – the nerve centre of the 1.2 billion-member church and whose members are entrusted with carrying out the pope’s decisions – were part of cliques and plots.
Francis called this unbalanced and degenerate and a “cancer that leads to a self-referential attitude”.
In his address yesterday, he spoke of those “traitors of trust” who had been entrusted with carrying out reforms but let themselves be corrupted by ambition and vainglory.
“When they are quietly let go, they erroneously declare themselves to be martyrs of the system instead of reciting a ‘mea culpa’ [Latin for ‘my fault’].” He did not cite any examples. In June, the Vatican’s first auditor-general resigned suddenly.
He said he had been forced to step down because he had discovered irregularities, but the Vatican said he had been spying on his superiors.
Earlier this month, the Vatican bank’s deputy director was fired under unexplained circumstances. In July, in a major shakeup of the Vatican administration, Francis replaced Catholicism’s top theologian, a conservative German cardinal who had been at odds with the pontiff’s vision of a more inclusive church.
Francis said the overwhelming majority of Curia members were faithful, competent and, some, saintly.
Later, in a separate meeting with lay Vatican employees and their families, he asked forgiveness for the failings of some church officials.