In his Christmas address to the Roman Curia, Pope Francis said that crisis can be beneficial to the Church, but conflict is always destructive. The annual address to the Vatican leadership has become a key indicator of papal priorities, and in past years Pope Francis has surprised his listeners with blunt criticism of what he has seen as deficiencies in the Curia. This year, his lengthy address took a different approach, advising against internal conflicts.
“Crisis generally has a posi-tive outcome, whereas conflict always creates discord and competition, an apparently irreconcilable antagonism that separates others into friends to love and enemies to fight,” the Pope said.
“Every crisis contains a rightful demand for renewal,” the Pontiff explained. The key to successful renewal, he said, is to see the problems facing the Church from the perspective of the Gospel. “Those who fail to view a crisis in the light of the Gospel simply perform an autopsy on a cadaver,” he said.
Authentic renewal, the Pope continued, requires “the courage to be completely open.” He contrasted that open attitude with the attitude of those who see a crisis in terms of conflict between different viewpoints.