Pope Francis, while speaking at the Angelus prayer on Sunday has said speaking ill of people and spreading gossip is worse than the dreaded Coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports Pope Francis at the Angelus prayer explores Jesus’ invitation to admonish members of the community who have sinned, and said fraternal correction builds up the Church while gossip tears it down.
Ahead of the traditional Marian prayer of the Angelus, Pope Francis reflected on the day’s Gospel (Mt 18:15-20), in which Jesus speaks about fraternal correction.
The Pope said the episode invites us to consider two dimensions of the Christian life: the communitarian, “which demands safeguarding communion” and the personal, “which obliges attention and respect for every individual conscience.”
When people see someone making a mistake, “the first thing we usually do is go and tell someone else about it. Gossip like this closes off the community. The great gossip is Satan who always says bad things about people”.
Satan “is a liar who seeks to divide the Church, to drive our brothers apart, so that they are no longer a community. Let us make an effort not to be gossips. Speaking ill of people is a plague worse than COVID,” the Pope said.