Pope Francis told gossip-loving priests and nuns to
bite their tongues on Monday, and warned those
breaking their vow of obedience to fall into line
sharpish.
“If you get an urge to say something against a brother
or a sister, to drop a gossip bomb, bite your tongue!
Hard!” the pontiff said in an improvised speech to
members of the clergy marking the end of the Year of
Consecrated Life.
The Argentine warned against those abusing their
religious vows of chastity, poverty and obedience,
describing “anarchy” as the “daughter of the devil”.
And he bemoaned a drop in the number of people
signing up for a religious life, but warned against
taking just anyone.
“Why is the womb of consecrated live becoming so
sterile?” he asked.
“Some congregations experiment with ‘artificial
insemination’. What do they do? They welcome… ‘Yes
come, come, come’. And then there are problems,” he
said.
“No. We must be serious about who we take. We must
clearly distinguish if it is a real vocation, and help it to
grow.”
The Roman Catholic Church is still smarting from the
clerical sex abuse scandal, which hurt the institution
globally and saw many believers, particularly in the
West, turn their back on the centuries-old institution.
The number of priests and nuns in industrialised
countries is in sharp decline, though the Church still
counts 693,000 nuns around the world and 55,000
priests.
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