Pope Francis said warned the Roman Curia against the dangers of conspiracy mindsets and cliques in his Christmas meeting with the clergy working for administrative apparatus of the Holy See Thursday.
He said it was necessary to rise above "that unbalanced and debased mindset of plots and small cliques that in fact represent - for all their self-justification and good intentions - a cancer leading to a self-centredness that also seeps into ecclesiastical bodies, and in particular those working in them".
Francis also said that people who seek to frustrate reform efforts should not try to portray themselves as martyrs.
"Let me allude to another danger: those who betray the trust put in them and profiteer from the Church's motherhood," he said. "I am speaking of persons carefully selected to give a greater vigour to the body and to the reform, but - failing to understand the lofty nature of their responsibility - let themselves be corrupted by ambition or vainglory. "Then, when they are quietly sidelined, they wrongly declare themselves martyrs of the system, of a "Pope kept in the dark", of the "old guard"..., rather than reciting a mea culpa. "Alongside these, there are others who are still working there, to whom all the time in the world is given to get back on the right track, in the hope that they find in the Church's patience an opportunity for conversion and not for personal advantage". The Argentine pontiff also stressed, however, that "the vast majority of faithful persons" were working "with praiseworthy commitment, fidelity, competence, dedication and great sanctity".
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