Faith requires constant conversion and change, Pope tells Roman Curia
December 22, 2022
» Continue to this story on Vatican Press Office
CWN Editor's Note: In his annual Christmas message to the leaders of the Roman Curia, Pope Francis stressed the need for constant conversion, and warned sternly against “the secret belief that we have nothing else to learn from the Gospel.”
“The worst thing that could happen to us is to think that we are no longer in need of conversion,” the Pope said. This, he said, is “the error of trying to crystallize the message of Jesus in a single, perennially valid form.” He insisted that the form of the faith “must be capable of constantly changing.”
Particularly for Church officials working at the Vatican, the Pope said, it is important to guard against “the temptation of thinking we are safe, better than others, no longer in need of conversion.” He spoke of the “elegant demons” who “enter smoothly, without our being conscious of them,” and tempt people to believe that they no longer have a need for conversion.
As example of this temptation, the Pontiff cited the 17th-century French Mother Angelica, who “became the soul of the Jansenist resistance, intransigent and unbending even in the face of ecclesiastical authority. Of her and her nuns, it was said that they were pure as angels and proud as demons. They had cast out the demon, but he had returned seven times stronger, and under the guise of austerity and rigor he had introduced rigidity and the presumption that they were better than others.”
As he neared the conclusion of his address to the Curia, Pope Francis reflected on the horrors of war, and said that if “we truly want the din of war to cease and give way to peace, then each of us ought to begin with himself.”
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