By Robert Mickens | Vatican City
Pope Francis brought together his top Vatican aides this week for an annual late December appointment that he described as “a way to express (their) fraternity ‘out loud’ through the exchange of Christmas greetings”.But this year’s holiday gathering of mostly bishops and cardinals was actually a chance for the Jesuit pope to once again dole out some good old-fashioned fraternal correction.In a forcefully delivered address on Thursday that lasted just over 30 minutes, he repeated — though in a slightly more subtle way and often using the first-person plural — warnings that he’s issued in previous years against such things as pride, rigidity, factions and clericalism.
“If we had to express the entire meaning of Christmas in a word, it strikes me that humility is the one most useful,” Francis told the Roman Curia officials.He lamented that “our times seem to have either forgotten humility or have relegated it to a form of moralism”.
