It's emblematic that the photo, taken at the Curial get-together last Christmastime, shows the gathering in chiaroscuro, in contrast to the bright ceiling fresco.
To echo Fr Hunwicke, when will he stop??? On top of everything, he invents things to rebuke others about. He's right up there with Donald Trump - worse, really, because he is the pope - in distorting truth (flat-out lying, in short) for self-serving purposes.
Pope Francis rebukes dismissed Vatican
officials who claim to be martyrs
[Has anyone read about any of his victims claiming they are martyrs?]
Thursday, 21 Dec 2017
Pope Francis has criticised Vatican officials for “ambition”, “vainglory” and “self-referentiality” in his annual keynote speech.
The yearly address to the Roman Curia, given in the days before Christmas, has often been
a wake-up call.
[It would be, if one assumes that none of those who work in the Curia ever do a daily examination of conscience or go to confession. Otherwise, Bergoglio's working assumption would be that they are all hardened sinners who are not even aware of sinning and choose to persist in sin - just like his privileged remarried divorcees.] In 2014, Francis drew up a list of “sicknesses” such as “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and “existential schizophrenia”.
This year the Pope again delivered some stern criticisms of his staff, and appeared to make reference to recent public controversies.
The Pope denounced an
“unbalanced and debased mindset of plots and small cliques that in fact represent – for all their self-justification and good intentions – a cancer leading to a self-centeredness”. [Sounds like he's talking about himself?]
He also referred to
former officials who left after being “corrupted by ambition or vainglory. Then, when they are quietly sidelined, they wrongly declare themselves martyrs of the system, of a “Pope kept in the dark”, of the “old guard”…, rather than reciting a mea culpa.”
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has been the focus of recent controversy. Three officials were removed from their posts, despite the protests of the then-prefect Cardinal Gerhard Müller. The cardinal’s term was then not renewed – the first time this has happened in modern Vatican history.
Cardinal Müller has since complained that Pope Francis “did not give a reason. Just as he gave no reason for dismissing three highly competent members of the CDF a few months earlier.”
Cardinal Müller added: “I cannot accept this way of doing things. As a bishop, one cannot treat people in this way.”
Another prominent official to have been removed this year is Libero Milone, the Vatican auditor general, who claimed he was forced out by the “old guard” because he was cracking down on financial corruption.
In this morning’s speech, the Pope praised “vast majority” of curial officials. saying that many work with “dedication” and sometimes “great holiness”.
But he acknowledged the difficulties of reforming the curia, quoting a 19th-century statesman who quipped: “Making reforms in Rome is like cleaning the Sphinx with a toothbrush.”
[All right already. It's something that has become axiomatic about curial reform, something the popes before you acknowledged,which didn't stop them from trying to do what they could. But you were supposed to be the wonder-worker pope, right? And up till recently, you were cocksure in all your statements that yes, you are 'reforming the Curia' and everything is right on track to accomplish that. Now, because most recent analyses - even from Bergoglian sites like Crux and iehard Bergoglians like John Allen - have pointed out how little reform has really been accomplished (because the best potential reforms have now been all rolled back), suddenly you acknowledge 'difficulties'.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/12/2017 18:14]