VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis again upbraided the high-level Catholic prelates who run the Vatican bureaucracy in an annual pre-Christmas speech Dec. 21, telling them to get beyond what he termed an "unbalanced and degraded logic of plots and small cliques" in order to better serve him, the global church and the world at large.
Francis told the cardinals and bishops who run the bureaucracy to not "let themselves be bribed by their ambition" in search for higher office but rather to act simply as antennae that listen for the "cries, joys and tears of the churches of the world" and relay what they hear to him.
Most of all, the pope told the prelates the Vatican is not designed to be closed in on itself but to be at the service of the world, especially local bishops, "for whose good it operates and acts."
He is wrong. Jesus established His Church for two main reasons;
Salvation
Sanctification
and in establishing it, He invested it with universal authority with a mandate to TEACH.
Considering itself as of being of service to one of its enemies (World, Flesh, Devil are our ancient and permanent enemies) means the world is the authority when, rather, it is the plain and simple truth that the Church is supposed to be serving GOD for HE is the authority and actualising HIS WILL and OBEYING ALL THE COMMANDMENTS OF JESUS is what the One True Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church should be about.
Speaking in the apostolic palace's 16th-century Clementine Hall in his colorful style, Francis warned: "A curia closed up in itself would betray the objective of its existence and would fall into self-centeredness, condemning itself to self-destruction."
Of the top of his head, ABS can not think of another Pope who was more self-centered than Franciscus - he wants to activate/implement/impose on everyone else his personal agenda; an agenda of his particular passions, proclivities, politics and theological perversions all of which are a clear rupture from the 255 popes who preceded him.
The pope was speaking Dec. 21 in an annual meeting that under previous pontiffs had simply been a polite encounter to exchange greetings before the holidays.
But, in 2014, he shocked the Vatican bureaucracy, known as the Roman curia, by using the occasion to list off 15 "spiritual sicknesses" he said he had witnessed among them. In 2016, he lashed out at high-level prelates who have been opposing his efforts to reform the Vatican, saying some are practicing a "malevolent resistance."
This year, Francis focused on the curia's relationship with the wider world, especially with other nations, Christian denominations and other religions. The pope laced his 30-minute address with references to three different analogies for how he thinks the curia should work: as a deacon, always aimed at serving others; as antennae, relaying signals; and as parts of a body, feeling and relaying sensations.
Describing the role of senses as "helping us to grasp the real and equally to place ourselves in the real," Francis said that ability helps identify what is essential and not.
"This is very important in getting beyond the unbalanced and degraded logic of plots and small cliques that in reality represent — despite all their justifications and good intentions — a cancer that brings on self-centeredness, that infiltrates ecclesiastical organisms and the people who work in them," said the pope.
Francis then lambasted "the betrayers of trust or the profiteers of the maternity of the church; people that are selected to give better vigor to reform but — not understanding the highness of their calling — let themselves be bribed by ambition or vainglory and when they are delicately removed erroneously declare themselves martyrs of the system, of a 'pope who doesn't know,' of the 'old-guard,' instead of reciting 'mea culpa.' "
Among those who left Vatican service in the last year were the city-state's first auditor general, a deputy in the so-called Vatican bank, and the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, German Cardinal Gerhard Müller.
