Pope Francis told Vatican bureaucrats on Saturday to stop speaking ill of one another, as he once again used his annual Christmas greetings to admonish the back-stabbing and gossiping among his closest collaborators.
A wheezing and congested sounding Francis, who just turned 88, urged the prelates instead to speak well of one another and undertake a humble examination of their own consciences in the Christmas holiday season.
“A church community lives in joyful and fraternal harmony to the extent that its members walk in the life of humility, renouncing evil thinking and speaking ill of others,” Francis said. “Gossip is an evil that destroys social life, sickens people’s hearts and leads to nothing. The people say it very well: Gossip is zero.”
“Beware of this,” he added.
By now Francis’ annual Christmas address to the priests, bishops and cardinals who work in the Vatican Curia has become a lesson in humility – and humiliation – as Francis offers a public dressing down of some of the sins in the workplace at the headquarters of the Catholic Church.