Defend the Vatican from gossip: Pope to the Corps of Gendarmerie

Vatican City, 28 September 2013: Gossip is a prohibited language in the Vatican, because it is a language that generates evil, said Pope Francis on Saturday morning during a special mass he celebrated for the Vatican police called the corps of Gendarmerie, at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in the Vatican Gardens. Corps of Gendarmerie is the police force tasked with maintaining order and security within the walls of Vatican City.

“I ask you not only to defend the gates of the Vatican,” - a necessary and important work – said the Pope, 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 – for everyone, even for me, said the Pope, 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. The devil tries to create internal war, a kind of civil and spiritual war. 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 to speak ill of others, never open our ears to gossip. And if one hears someone gossiping, stop him! Tell him, ‘Here there can be none of that: walk out of St. Anne’s Gate. Go outside and talk there! Here you cannot!’ The good seed yes: speak well of one another, but not the poison seed of gossip.”Source: VR Sedoc