If there’s one thing that’s worse than the Covid-19 epidemic, like the Pope, it’s by the water cooler over the front fence, into the hair salon, and apparently over the Vatican: gossip.
“Please, brothers and sisters, let’s not try to gossip,” Pope Francis said of the Catholic Church during his weekly blessing. “Gossip is a worse plague than cowardice. Bad. Let’s make a big effort: no gossip! “
Reports say he stopped speaking from his prepared lessons to freely knock on church communities and his repeated complaints about gossiping in the Vatican bureaucracy.
He declined to go into specific details but said the devil is the “biggest gossip” he wants to share with the church.
Click here for full coronavirus coverage
He was talking about the gospel passage about the nature of risong between private voice and public face – when they do something wrong the other needs to be corrected in private.
In the Catholic hierarchy this “fraternal correction” has been used to correct the actions and behaviors of pastors and bishops without spreading dirty clothing in the public sphere.
Survivors of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse have previously noted that this ideology of private reprimand is far from public punishment – allowing hunting priests to freely abuse victims and superiors to cover up crimes.
The Associated Press contributes to this report.
