Pope Francis typically has no problem being demanding with members of the Roman Curia. But this year during his Christmas greeting to his closest aides, he explained why he has always held them to such high standards.
POPE FRANCIS
Forgive me, brothers and sisters, if at times I say things that sound strong. It's not because I don't believe in the value of niceness and tenderness, but because it is good to save kind gestures for the weary and oppressed, and to find the courage to unsettle those are comfortable.
The Pope explained that those who work in the Curia or anywhere within the Church are often faced with the same temptation that the brother of the prodigal son fell into.
POPE FRANCIS
For the one who leaves, it is easy to see how lost they are. For the one who stays at home it is difficult to see the hell the other is living. They become convinced that they are a victim, unjustly treated by authority and ultimately by God Himself. How often this happens to us here at home.
Pope Francis also said that those working in the Curia and the Church are normally subjected to more complicated forms of temptation. For this reason, he said they must perform rigorous examinations of conscience.
He added that after one's first conversion to faith, the demon that produces temptation is kept away for a short while.
POPE FRANCIS
But it is false to think that it stays away for a long time. It is ingenuous to think that. In fact, after a while he reappears to us in a new guise. If before it appeared crude and violent, now it behaves more elegantly and politely. Then we once again need to recognize and expose it.
It always returns. The cast out demon returns. In disguise, but it returns. Let us be aware.
The Pope greeted his aides one by one after the meeting, and gave them a book by the editorial director of the Vatican's Dicastery for Communication, and another book on personal conversion.
JRB
TR: JM
