‘ELEGANT DEMON’

Pope Takes Aim at Conservatives Who Act ‘Holier Than Thou’

The pontiff warned cardinals, bishops and priests who work at the Holy See to beware of those among them who think they are “better than others.”

In what has become an annual dressing down of the clergy who work inside the Roman Curia, Pope Francis used his annual Christmas address to Vatican employees to express his not-so-veiled hate for conservatives, who don’t like him much, either. Warning that those who act “holier than thou” in the way they practice conservative Catholicism are on notice. “Yet we are in greater danger than all others, because we are beset by the ‘elegant demon,’ who does not make a loud entrance but comes with flowers in his hand,” he said. “Don’t take advantage of your own position and role to mortify the other.” Francis has been in a battle with traditionalist Catholics since he was elected in 2013, many of whom do not consider him the pope as long as Benedict XVI—who resigned in 2013—is still alive. They openly despise his focus on mercy and the wriggle room he often has on doctrinal teachings. The pope warned all those present in the elegant Hall of Blessings of the Apostolic Palace that they are vulnerable. “We could easily fall into the temptation of thinking we are safe, better than others, no longer in need of conversion.”