Vatican Roundup
Pastors who preach one thing and do another are wounded and harm the Church, Pope Francis said.
Like the scribes and Pharisees of old, pastors end up leading a double life when they detach themselves from God and his people, the Pope said during morning Mass at the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
“Jesus is clear in this: ‘Do what they say’ – they speak the truth – ‘but not what they do,’” the Pope said. “It is awful to see pastors with double lives: it is a wound in the Church.”
The Pope reflected on the day’s Gospel reading from St Mark in which Jesus astonishes the crowd by his preaching because he taught “them as one having authority and not as the scribes”.
That same authority, the Pope explained, is awakened in today’s pastors when they are “close to God in prayer and close to the people”.