IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Catholics will forgive their priests
for almost any weakness, but not for an exaggerated attachment to money or for
mistreating parishioners, Pope Francis told 160 priests who work in Vatican
nunciatures around the world.
“The people of God have a great nose” for sniffing
out priests who serve the god of money more than God the father, he told the
priests Nov. 18.
Celebrating Mass with them in the chapel of the Domus
Sanctae Marthae, Pope Francis focused on the day’s Gospel reading, which was
St. Luke’s account of Jesus throwing the money-changers out of the temple.
In the reading, Jesus accuses the merchants of turning the
Lord’s house into a “den of thieves.”
“The Lord helps us understand what is the seed of the
Antichrist, the seed of the enemy, the seed that ruins his kingdom” — an attachment to
money, the pope said.
“A heart attached to money is an idolatrous
heart,” he said.
A church, like the temple, is supposed to be a house of
prayer, a place to encounter the God of love, the pope said. But “the
lord-money” constantly tries to enter even there.
The merchants and money-changers did not just make themselves
at home in the temple, Pope Francis said. “Who rented them places, huh?
The priests. The priests rented them and money entered” into the house of
God.
The devil tempts people, including priests, to make money an
idol, leading to a life that is “without the happiness, without the joy of
serving the true Lord who is the only one who can give us true joy,” the
pope said.
“It’s a personal choice,” he told the priests.
“What is your attitude toward money? Are you attached to money?”
The Catholic faithful, he said, are pretty sharp “in
canonizing as well as condemning” their priests. “They will forgive
many weaknesses, many of their priests’ sins. But there are two they cannot
forgive: an attachment to money — that they cannot forgive — and the
mistreatment of people, which is something the people of God cannot
digest.”
With other weaknesses, he said, people will say, “‘Yes, but he is not
well’ or ‘poor man,
he’s lonely.’ They
try to justify” his behavior.
Pope Francis told the nunciature staff members that “it
is sad to see a priest arrive at the end of his life — in agony, in a coma —
and his nephews and nieces are gathered, looking around to see what they can
take.”
Priests should have “sufficient money, that of an
honest worker, and sufficient savings like an honest worker would have,”
but not wealth. He prayed that God would give him and all priests the grace of
being content with what is enough “and not seek more.”
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