The Pope's remarks on New Year's Eve referred to the briefness of life

Pope Francis asks God to forgive the Curia its 15 Vatican 'diseases'

Long list of faults has lessons for all as Pope highlights spiritual challenge for his Church

Colum Kenny

PUBLISHED04/01/2015

"Blistering" was how the New York Times described his words to those cardinals and other superiors of the Catholic Church known as "the Curia".

His attack on what he called "curial diseases" has broader implications for all who care about the future of that Church.

When Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote his poem The Charge of the Light Brigade, he was commemorating a suicidal assault by 600 British cavalry. But Francis rode alone when he met the Curia.

Francis even used a cavalry image. The first Jesuit to become pope, this first Spanish-American pontiff reminded the Curia that Spanish Jesuits used to describe their Society of Jesus as the "light brigade of the Church".

Maybe he spoke of himself when he remembered the transfer of a young Jesuit who, while loading his many possessions on a truck ("suitcases, books, objects and gifts"), heard an old Jesuit who was observing him ask, "this is the light brigade of the Church?".

But some fear that Pope Francis is less like an heroic horseman in braided uniform than a well-intended Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.

Inspired by noble ideas, but aided only by the simple Sancho Panza, Spain's Don Quixote set out to undo wrongs and to defend the helpless before things went wrong and he ended up attacking mills that he mistook for giants.

The Curia is a bureaucratic giant. It wields great power in a Church where every member is equal in principle. It has blocked popes whose proposals or ambitions it did not share.

You don't have to believe conspiracy theories about the early death of the reforming Pope John Paul I (just 33 days after his election in 1978), to know that any pope can be frustrated by the sheer bureaucracy of the massive organisation that he heads.

The Curia believes that it has a role in steadying the hand of popes, much as civil servants curb the enthusiasm of a new government minister. But Francis asked God to forgive him and it their failings. He wants the Curia to recognise no less than 15 "diseases" to which it is exposed.

Francis pulled few punches as he listed these. There is, for example, "the disease of feeling oneself 'immortal' or 'indispensible'". And the sickness of "spiritual Alzheimer's disease". This, he said, is "a progressive decline in the spiritual faculties which… greatly handicaps a person by making him incapable of doing anything on his own, living in a state of absolute dependence on his often imaginary perceptions". "We see it in those who have lost the memory of their encounter with the Lord." Ouch!

Some cardinals of the Curia may not have liked being publicly scolded by Francis about "the disease of rivalry and vainglory" or "the disease of gossiping, grumbling and back-biting".

Or how about this all-out cavalry assault? He identified "the disease of existential schizophrenia" as "the disease of those who live a double life, the fruit of that hypocrisy typical of the mediocre and of a progressive spiritual emptiness which no doctorates or academic titles can fill".

Francis said that this "is a disease which often strikes those who abandon pastoral service and restrict themselves to bureaucratic matters, thus losing contact with reality, with concrete people".

"In this way they create their own parallel world, where they set aside all that they teach with severity to others and begin to live a hidden and often dissolute life. For this most serious disease conversion is most urgent and indeed indispensable (cf. Lk 15:11-32)."

Certain cardinals have already made it clear that they are concerned about this Pope's ambitions, and whisper loudly that his attitude lends ammunition to those whom they regard as enemies of their Church.

Francis chided cardinals and others who suffer from the disease of "self-exhibition", of those who "are ready to slander, defame and discredit others, even in newspapers and magazines". And he ended his list of 15 diseases on a jarring note, singling out a particular unnamed priest. That priest "used to call journalists to tell - and invent - private and confidential matters involving his confrères [brother priests] and parishioners. The only thing he was concerned about was being able to see himself on the front page, since this made him feel 'powerful and glamorous', while causing great harm to others and to the Church". Poor sad soul!

He quite fairly criticises those who calumniate, defame and discredit others, "even in newspapers and magazines… to put themselves on display and to show that they are more capable than others… often in the name of justice and transparency!". But he might have acknowledged that priests and bishops sometimes have a duty to speak publicly if necessary in order to out wrongdoings such as child abuse.

He did recall that he "read once that priests are like planes: they only make news when they crash, even though so many of them are in the air. Many people criticise, and few pray for them. It is a very touching, but also a very true saying, because it points to the importance and the frailty of our priestly service, and how much evil a single priest who 'crashes' can do to the whole body of the Church".

The Pope's chiding of cardinals provides pleasure also to Catholics who hold their hierarchy in something less than the highest honour. But whenever we judge others, we have a moral duty to look in the mirror and see if we ourselves are guilty of such faults on a personal or professional level.

And Francis is not some kind of secular reformer about to make common cause with all liberals.

"In fact," he points out, "the Curia - like the Church - cannot live without a vital, personal, authentic and solid relationship with Christ."

The address to the Curia is available on the Vatican website and is worth reading for another reason. In it, Pope Francis mentions a prayer that he says daily. Believed to have been composed 500 years ago by the English humanist and martyr, Sir Thomas More, the prayer gives us a glimpse into the mind and heart of Pope Francis.

It goes: "Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest. Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humour to maintain it. Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good and that doesn't frighten easily at the sight of evil, but rather finds the means to put things back in their place. Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumbling, sighs and laments, nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called 'I'. Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humour. Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke and to discover in life a bit of joy, and to be able to share it with others."

Sunday Independent