教宗痛罵教廷「心靈癡呆」
聖誕談話 句句見骨 劍指貪婪15弊
梵蒂岡
【李寧怡╱綜合外電報導】天主教教宗方濟各前天與梵蒂岡高層官員舉行年度聖誕聚會，他一改節慶傳統，發表措辭空前嚴厲的演說，痛批教廷官員有15大弊病，包括在背後批評他人的「流言恐怖主義」、忘記服侍天主的「心靈阿茲海默症」、結黨營私的「派系癌」、官員貪婪等。
【李寧怡╱綜合外電報導】天主教教宗方濟各前天與梵蒂岡高層官員舉行年度聖誕聚會，他一改節慶傳統，發表措辭空前嚴厲的演說，痛批教廷官員有15大弊病，包括在背後批評他人的「流言恐怖主義」、忘記服侍天主的「心靈阿茲海默症」、結黨營私的「派系癌」、官員貪婪等。
教廷是羅馬天主教會的中央行政機構，長年由義大利籍樞機主教把持。來自阿根廷的教宗方濟各（Pope Francis）先前未曾任職教廷，堪稱「政治素人」，上任後亟欲改革，包括要求過去不受監管的獨立財政部門實施新的會計與預算制度等。
官僚搞派系搞流言
「教廷15弊」的依據，是去年榮退的教宗本篤十六世委請3名樞機主教深入調查教廷官僚文化後所做的報告，方濟各的講稿字字斟酌、句句見骨。他指出，官員不敢當面批評而導致的「流言恐怖主義」，會「冷血殺害弟兄的名譽」；派系文化則會「成為危及整體和諧的癌症」。
方濟各也批評官員貪婪鑽營、「表情陰森」、對屬下「太嚴厲、傲慢」，連工作太勤奮也是弊病之一，因為不休假陪伴家人的官員壓力太大。台下教廷官員神情木然，最後僅以零落掌聲回應，現場幾無聖誕喜樂氣氛。
方濟各也批評官員貪婪鑽營、「表情陰森」、對屬下「太嚴厲、傲慢」，連工作太勤奮也是弊病之一，因為不休假陪伴家人的官員壓力太大。台下教廷官員神情木然，最後僅以零落掌聲回應，現場幾無聖誕喜樂氣氛。
唯有嚴厲才能改革
天主教會史學家梅洛尼指出，已故教宗若望保祿二世及本篤十六世皆無暇過問政務，教廷官員長年以來幾可為所欲為。方濟各這場演說史無前例，「教宗如此疾言厲色，因為他深知必須如此。」美國天主教史學家威斯特也說，教宗可能認為「唯有嚴厲痛責才能改善現況」。
「教廷15弊」節錄
●自以為了不起，不自省、不長進、不跟上時代
●心靈與大腦硬化，喪失同理心
●各部門不互相協調，像只會製造噪音的樂器
●罹患「存在的精神分裂症」、偽善
●為牟私利而對上司阿諛奉承
●表情陰森引人畏懼
●貪婪，用物質填補內心空虛
●結黨營私
●追逐名氣、權力並以此炫耀
資料來源：英國《衛報》
Pope Francis makes scathing critique of Vatican officials in Curia speech
Pontiff specifies 15 ‘ailments’ that plague Vatican’s power-hungry bureaucracy including gossip and ‘spiritual Alzheimer’s’
Pope Francis has ended the year with a scathing critique of the church’s highest-ranking officials, including a list of 15 “ailments” that he said plagued the Vatican’s power-hungry bureaucracy.
The Argentinian pontiff used a traditional Christmas greeting on Monday to the cardinals, bishops and priests who run the Holy See to portray a church hierarchy that had lost its humanity at times, a body consumed by narcissism and excessive activity, where men who are meant to serve God with optimism instead presented a hardened, sterile face to the world.
The 78-year-old pope’s second Christmas speech since his election in 2013 was met by tepid applause among his Vatican audience, according to the Associated Press, and just a few smiling faces.
Chief among the pope’s list of sins was the “terrorism of gossip”, which he said could “kill the reputation of our colleagues and brothers in cold blood”. He denounced the “pathology of power” that afflicts those who seek to enhance themselves above all else, and the “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that has made leaders of the Catholic church forget they are supposed to be joyful.
Francis, the first pope born in the Americas, has refused many of the trappings of office and made plain his determination to bring the church’s hierarchy closer to its 1.2 billion members.
To that end, he has set out to reform the Italian-dominated Curia, the Vatican’s civil service whose power struggles and leaks were widely held to be partly responsible for Benedict XVI’s decision last year to become the first pope in six centuries to resign.
In his Christmas greeting, Francis used biblical references to condemn the “disease” of feeling “immortal and essential”.
“Sometimes [officials] feel themselves ‘lords of the manor’ – superior to everyone and everything,” he said.
“These and other maladies and temptations are a danger for every Christian and for any administrative organisation … and can strike at both the individual and the corporate level,” he said.
It was a harsh denouncement of his colleagues following a successful few weeks for the pope, who was seen as instrumental in the biggest diplomatic breakthrough of the year: the restoration of relations between the United States and Cuba.
But Pope Francis also experienced a significant setback in 2014. His attempt to shift the Vatican’s positions on some family issues, including its position on gay and lesbian people and the question of whether divorced and remarried Catholics could take communion, erupted into a massive feud between liberal and conservative forces in the church. Ultimately, his attempts to soften the church’s positions failed to win enough support among cardinals.
John Allen, a Vatican expert and associate editor of the Crux blog, said the Christmas greeting came at a tense time for the Holy See, as Francis and nine of his cardinal advisers are drawing up plans for a revamp of the Vatican bureaucracy.
This year, the pontiff celebrated the holiday not just with cardinals and archbishops, as pope’s have traditionally done, but also with rank-and-file employees at the Vatican and their families, Allen noted.
In full: Pope Francis’s 15 ‘ailments of the Curia’
1) Feeling immortal, immune or indispensable. “A Curia that doesn’t criticise itself, that doesn’t update itself, that doesn’t seek to improve itself is a sick body.”
2) Working too hard. “Rest for those who have done their work is necessary, good and should be taken seriously.”
3) Becoming spiritually and mentally hardened. “It’s dangerous to lose that human sensibility that lets you cry with those who are crying, and celebrate those who are joyful.”
4) Planning too much. “Preparing things well is necessary, but don’t fall into the temptation of trying to close or direct the freedom of the Holy Spirit, which is bigger and more generous than any human plan.”
5) Working without coordination, like an orchestra that produces noise. “When the foot tells the hand, ‘I don’t need you’ or the hand tells the head ‘I’m in charge.’”
6) Having “spiritual Alzheimer’s”. “We see it in the people who have forgotten their encounter with the Lord ... in those who depend completely on their here and now, on their passions, whims and manias, in those who build walls around themselves and become enslaved to the idols that they have built with their own hands.”
7) Being rivals or boastful. “When one’s appearance, the colour of one’s vestments or honorific titles become the primary objective of life.”
8) Suffering from “existential schizophrenia”. “It’s the sickness of those who live a double life, fruit of hypocrisy that is typical of mediocre and progressive spiritual emptiness that academic degrees cannot fill. It’s a sickness that often affects those who, abandoning pastoral service, limit themselves to bureaucratic work, losing contact with reality and concrete people.”
9) Committing the “terrorism of gossip”. “It’s the sickness of cowardly people who, not having the courage to speak directly, talk behind people’s backs.”
10) Glorifying one’s bosses. “It’s the sickness of those who court their superiors, hoping for their benevolence. They are victims of careerism and opportunism, they honour people who aren’t God.”
11) Being indifferent to others. “When, out of jealousy or cunning, one finds joy in seeing another fall rather than helping him up and encouraging him.”
12) Having a “funereal face”. “In reality, theatrical severity and sterile pessimism are often symptoms of fear and insecurity. The apostle must be polite, serene, enthusiastic and happy and transmit joy wherever he goes.”
13) Wanting more. “When the apostle tries to fill an existential emptiness in his heart by accumulating material goods, not because he needs them but because he’ll feel more secure.”
14) Forming closed circles that seek to be stronger than the whole. “This sickness always starts with good intentions but as time goes by, it enslaves its members by becoming a cancer that threatens the harmony of the body and causes so much bad scandals especially to our younger brothers.”
15) Seeking worldly profit and showing off. “It’s the sickness of those who insatiably try to multiply their powers and to do so are capable of calumny, defamation and discrediting others, even in newspapers and magazines, naturally to show themselves as being more capable than others.”
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Pope Francis’s Curia attack marks a hardening of his heart against them
Vatican clerics may well be guilty of jealousy, gossip and ‘sterile pessimism’. But, honestly, which workplace isn’t?
Pope Francis took the occasion of Christmas to mount a really savage attack on the bureaucracy of the Vatican. Characteristically, he did so in a speech to the very people he was criticising.
This isn’t surprising, when you look at his charge sheet. The assembled clerics were accused of “spiritual Alzheimer’s”, “the terrorism of gossip”, lack of self-criticism, supposing themselves indispensable, of forming cliques, fixating on office politics, of “out of jealousy or cunning [finding] joy in seeing another fall, rather than helping him up and encouraging him”, or “theatrical severity and sterile pessimism” and, of course, of “the sickness of deifying leaders”.
Well, there’s one boss the Curia surely won’t be deifying this Christmas. The pope’s speech was received in almost complete silence, according to reports.
The question isn’t whether it was accurate – it corresponds very well to what outsiders say about the Vatican bureaucracy. In fact, it represents a notable hardening of the pope’s heart against them. A year ago, he was saying much nicer things, telling one journalist that it was really true that there were godly people in the Vatican. But he has very carefully arranged his life so that he is far more independent of the Curia than previous popes. He doesn’t live in the papal apartments and he controls his own visitors.
The really interesting question is whether there is any bureaucracy which functions much better than the Curia. Is there any office which doesn’t know “the terrorism of gossip”? Or where leaders aren’t worshipped and underlings ignored? Surely you don’t have to be a celibate priest to take pleasure in the misfortunes of your colleagues, or to have entirely lost contact with the idealism which brought you into the job.
So, as you take a break for Christmas, what would you say to your colleagues if you had the pope’s privilege of telling them exactly what you think?
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