His words came in his annual Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia.
“At Christmas,” Pope Francis said, “we are called to say ‘yes’ with our faith, not to the Master of the universe, and not even the most noble ideas, but precisely to this God who is the humble lover.”
In his address to the Roman Curia, the Holy Father returned, as during the previous two year’s addresses, to the theme of Curial reform, laying out the framework, guiding principles, and what is yet to come.
He said, “Since the Curia is not an immobile bureaucratic apparatus, reform is first and foremost a sign of life, of a Church that advances on her pilgrim way, of a Church that is living and for this reason semper reformanda, in need of reform because she is alive.”
The Pope said reform must “con-form to the Good News which must be proclaimed joyously and courageously to all, especially to the poor, the least and the outcast” and that it “must be guided by ecclesiology and directed in bonum et in servitium, as is the service of the Bishop of Rome”.
He said the aim of reform is not aesthetic, like a facelift, for “it isn’t wrinkles we need to worry about in the Church, but blemishes!”
Pope Francis said curial reform will only work if the men and women who work in the Curia are renewed and not simply replaced.
“Permanent formation is not enough; what we need also and above all is permanent conversion and purification. Without a change of mentality, efforts at practical improvement will be in vain.”
He said resistance to the process of reform is healthy, provided it does not come from ill intentions.
Describing three types of resistance, the Pope said open resistance is “born of goodwill and sincere dialogue” and hidden resistance comes from “hardened hearts content with the empty rhetoric of a complacent spiritual reform”, while malicious resistance springs up “in misguided minds and comes to the fore when the devil inspires ill intentions… [which] hides behind words of self-justification and often accusation”.