Pope to Gendarmes: be on guard against hidden danger of gossip
(Vatican Radio) Gossip is a “forbidden language” in the Vatican, because it is a language
that generates evil. This was a main focus of Pope Francis’ homily at a special Mass
celebrated in the Lourdes Grotto of the Vatican Gardens on Saturday morning for the
Vatican’s Corps of Gendarmes – the police force tasked with maintaining order and
security within the walls of Vatican City. Listen to our report:
Pope Francis
said, “I ask you not only to defend [the gates], the doors, the windows of the Vatican,”
- a necessary and important work as well - but to defend “as your patron saint Saint
Michael,” the doors of the hearts of those who work in the Vatican , where temptation
“enters” exactly as elsewhere :
“There is a temptation – I would like to say
it is thus for everyone , even for me , for everyone – a temptation that the devil
likes very much: that against unity, when hidden dangers work directly against the
unity of those who live and work in the Vatican – and the devil tries to create internal
war, a kind of civil war and spiritual, is it not? It is a war that is not waged with
the weapons that we recognize: it is a war waged with the tongue.”
"We ask
St. Michael to help us in this war : never speak ill of each other, never open your
ears to gossip. And if [one hears] someone gossiping, stop him! [Say] , ‘Here there
can be none of that: walk out of St. Anne’s Gate. Go outside and talk there! Here
you cannot!’ That’s it, isn’t it? The good seed yes: speak well of one another ,
yes, but [do not sow the poison seed] of gossip.”