The Holy Father gave the latest of his public dressing down to Prelates as his Christmas Address todaY (23rd December). They were reported to have sat , 'Stony faced'. Little wonder as he accused them of being lacking in humility, proud, rigid, wrapped up in the past, fearful, failing to help the poor, not learning from their sins, corrupt, pretending to be good, not open to forgiveness and suffering from Spiritual Alzeimers. He went on and on and on in this tone for several pages. Pope Francis must have gotten out of the wrong side of the bed. Sounds like they are all getting along swimmingly. https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/vatican-christmas-critique/2021/12/23/id/1049746/ I thought I would Google the audience for fun to see the faces of the assembled Prelates whilst the Holy Father was verbally Nuking them in Public. But they are all squirming behind their masks. A Happy Christmas Crew.
Padraig i actually was up really early and i started watching it. I was horrified and couldnt handle more than 10 minutes. Never have I seen a Pope act this way.
It's pretty basic that you rebuke subordinates in private to avoid humiliation and making them rebel. They must be seething as he has done this several times before the entire Planet.
They didn't look unhappy at the end when they lined up to shake his hand and collect their Christmas prezzie. They were all smiles. I'm pretty sure I saw Cardinal Turkson looking very happy. He certainly didn't have the demeanour of someone about to offer his resignation. I wonder what they got for a present. Not a bottle of plonk and a box of Black Magic. It looks like some papers, and Pope Francis does like to present people with copies of documents he has issued. Maybe it was a signed copy of Traditionis Custodes or whatever he called the document suppressing the TLM.
Probably depends on the department. If you're in a department headed by someone the Pope likes and the department head likes you, it's probably OK. Those departments likely have the most staff to handle the workload and the least amount of scrutiny from above. Looking at those Bishops lining up, I was reminded of when we were children on the annual visit to Santa's grotto. We lined up for ages, Santa asked us what we wanted for Christmas and one of Santa's little helpers handed us a parcel. More often than not, there was a colouring book and crayons in the parcel. Maybe that's what the Bishops got from the Pope's little helper.
