Pope to Gendarmes: be on guard against hidden danger of gossip

(Vatican Radio) Gossip is a “forbidden language” in the Vatican, because it is a language that generates evil. This was a main focus of Pope Francis’ homily at a special Mass celebrated in the Lourdes Grotto of the Vatican Gardens on Saturday morning for the Vatican’s Corps of Gendarmes – the police force tasked with maintaining order and security within the walls of Vatican City. 

Pope Francis said, “I ask you not only to defend [the gates], the doors, the windows of the Vatican,” - a necessary and important work as well - but to defend “as your patron saint Saint Michael,” the doors of the hearts of those who work in the Vatican , where temptation “enters” exactly as elsewhere :

“There is a temptation – I would like to say it is thus for everyone , even for me , for everyone – a temptation that the devil likes very much: that against unity, when hidden dangers work directly against the unity of those who live and work in the Vatican – and the devil tries to create internal war, a kind of civil war and spiritual, is it not? It is a war that is not waged with the weapons that we recognize: it is a war waged with the tongue.”

"We ask St. Michael to help us in this war : never speak ill of each other, never open your ears to gossip. And if [one hears] someone gossiping, stop him! [Say] , ‘Here there can be none of that: walk out of St. Anne’s Gate. Go outside and talk there! Here you cannot!’ That’s it, isn’t it? The good seed yes: speak well of one another , yes, but [do not sow the poison seed] of gossip.”