Francis: " Gossip Ruins the Church"

Vatican Insider
May 20, 2013

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo/francesco-francis-francisco-24931/

Ulrich Mühe stars in the German thriller "The lives of others" in which a secret agent becomes obssessed with the lives of a couple he has been instructed to observe

This was the Pope’s message at this morning’s mass in the Sanctae Marthae residence. “The Christian must overcome the temptation to "interfere in the lives of others"

“We all chat in Church! As Christians we chat!” Pope Francis said during the mass he celebrated in Saint Martha’s House this morning. “The chatter is hurtful. We hurt one another. It is as if we want to put each other down” and “talk and envy do so much harm to the Christian community,” the Pope stressed.

Bergoglio said Christians must overcome the temptation to “interfere in the lives of others.” According to the Vatican Radio’s report, the Pope was keen to underline that envy seriously harms the Christian community and that it is not right to “ tell only half [of the story] that suits us.”

The mass, which the Pope co-celebrated with the Vicariate of Rome’s Fr. Daniel Grech, was attended by a group of students from the Pontifical Lateran University, accompanied by the rector of the  university, Mgr. Enrico Dal Covolo; Neocatechumenals Kiko Argueello, Carmen Hernandez and Mario Pezzi and Community and Liberation’s Roberto Fontolan and Emilia Guarnieri. “Envy rusts the Christian community,” the Pope said in his homily; "it brings much hurt," the "devil wants that."

"We all chat in Church! As Christians we chat! The chatter is hurtful? We hurt one another. It is as if we want to put each other down,” the Pope said. “Instead of growing one makes the other feel small while I feel great. That will not do! It seems nice to chat ... I do not know why, but it looks nice. Like sweet of honey, right? You take one and then another, and another, and another, and in the end you have a stomach ache. And why? The chatter is like that eh? It is 'sweet at first and it ruins you, it ruins your soul! Rumours are destructive in the Church, they are destructive ... It’s 'a little' like the spirit of Cain who killed his brother, his tongue; it kills his brother!"

“On this road, the Holy Father said, "we become Christians of good manners and bad habits." But how do we do this? Normally, Pope Francis noted, "we do three things": "We supply misinformation: we tell only half that suits us and not the other half, the other half we do not say because it is not convenient for us. You smile at that ... Is that true or not? Did you see that thing? It goes on. The second is defamation: When a person truly has a flaw, it is big, they tell it, 'like a journalist' ... And the character of this person is ruined. And the third is the slander of saying things that are not true. It is like killing ones brother! All three - disinformation, defamation and slander - are sins! This is sin! It is to slap Jesus in the person of his children, his brothers," the Pope emphasised.

Pope Francis recalled Jesus words to Peter, warning that "This kind of talk will not do you any good, because it will just bring to the Church a spirit of destruction. Follow me!”