Pope Francis critical of Vatican's 'diseased' bureaucracy

VATICAN CITY, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- The Curia, the Vatican's administrative bureaucracy, suffers from ethical and spiritual illnesses ranging from superiority complexes, insensitivity and gossip, Pope Francis said Monday.

The pope used his annual Christmas address to the Vatican's governing body to lay out a list of maladies that need to be addressed.

Feelings of immortality, lack of collaboration and excessive vanity could all be symptoms of a "pathology of power," he said. The pope accused the Curia of "forgetting the story of salvation" that caused members to lose the "memory of their encounter with God," likening the effect to spiritual Alzheimer's disease.

"Those who lose their inner serenity, their vivacity and audacity, to hide behind their papers, becoming like procedural machines rather than men of God. This is dangerous to lose human sensitivity, so necessary in order to cry with those who cry and enjoy with those who enjoy," the pontiff said.

The pope spoke of the disease of gossip as "satanic assassination" that consumes a person and "turns them into a Satan," in which members lack courage and speak ill of their own colleagues behind their backs.

"Dear brothers, let us be aware and guard against the terrorism of gossip," Francis said.

Previously, the popes has spoken about reforms that include doing more to welcome divorced and gay Catholics to the church and has talked about economic equality through legitimate redistribution of wealth at the United Nations.

"Only the Holy Spirit and the soul of Christ, only he can protect us from the disease," Francis said. "A church that doesn't try to improve is like a sick body."

He suggested the Curia be mindful of the illnesses they possess.

"We have to cure ourselves of these. Let us try to grow together and close to Christ."