In his annual address to the Roman Curia, Pope Francis said that Church leaders must “remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward.”
The Pope lamented that “sixty years after the Council, we are still debating the division between ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives,’ but that is not the difference: the real, central difference is between lovers and those who have lost that initial passion.”
In his annual exchange of Christmas greetings with the leaders of the Curia, the Pope offered a meditation on the Virgin Mary, and her gift for listening and discernment. Discernment, he s aid, “can strip us of the illusion of omniscience, from the danger of thinking that it is enough simply to apply rules, from the temptation to carry on, even in the life of the Curia, by simply repeating what we have always done.”
As for listening, the Pope recommended that “there is no better way to listen than on your knees.”