Pope Francis reportedly said that “gossip is a woman’s thing,” in a recent meeting with about 100 young priests from the Diocese of Rome, of which he is bishop.
The Holy Father’s statement would have been given within the framework of his meeting with the priests at the House of the Pious Disciples of the Divine Master in Rome, last Wednesday, May 29.
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According to Spanish journalist Javier Martínez-Brocal, correspondent of the Spanish newspaper ABC At the Vatican, Pope Francis was talking about loyalty between priests and the people they serve, as well as the importance of not criticizing behind anyone’s back; when he referred to the gossip.
“I know that in the parishes (of Rome) there is often gossip. Gossip doesn’t help. Gossip is a woman’s thing,” Pope Francis would have noted.
“In the parishes some say: ‘but what does the Pope have in his head? You have to see this Pope…!’”, he would have added.
“We have pants, we have to say things to each other’s faces,” the Holy Father reportedly indicated at the meeting.
The Italian website I cannot be silentalso referred to the issue and indicated that Pope Francis would also have referred to some problems of the Diocese of Rome, such as “corruption.”
“In the Diocese of Rome I do many things that the vicar told me to do. What there is in the diocese are problems of corruption, I am clear about it. Corruption problems. I am trying with the auxiliary bishops to find solutions to this,” Pope Francis reportedly noted.
For Martínez-Brocal, author of the book The successor. My memories of Benedict XVI —in which Pope Francis narrates important and unpublished details about his relationship with Benedict XVI—, this episode “has generated discomfort in the Vatican because leaks, even authentic ones, are always interested.”
The previous leak occurred only a few days ago, when it was learned that, in the context of his meeting with the Italian bishops, the Holy Father had said that “there is too much faggot in certain seminaries,” after which the Vatican issued a statement in the one in which Pope Francis apologized in case he had offended anyone.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.