"The court is the leprosy of the papacy."

I have experienced sometimes in the Church what Pope Francis describes as "curia-centric" behavior, where the faithful end up going away from centralized bureaucracies feeling treated as if they were an unwanted nuisance but in more recent years less so in Rome and more so elsewhere..


"No, there are sometimes courtiers in the curia, but the curia as a whole is another thing. It is what in an army is called the quartermaster's office, it manages the services that serve the Holy See. But it has one defect: it is Vatican-centric. It sees and looks after the interests of the Vatican, which are still, for the most part, temporal interests. This Vatican-centric view neglects the world around us. I do not share this view and I'll do everything I can to change it. The Church is or should go back to being a community of God's people, and priests, pastors and bishops who have the care of souls, are at the service of the people of God. The Church is this, a word not surprisingly different from the Holy See, which has its own function, important but at the service of the Church. I would not have been able to have complete faith in God and in his Son if I had not been trained in the Church, and if I had not had the good fortune of being in Argentina, in a community without which I would not have become aware myself and my faith. " ( Pope Francis in La Reppubblica interview)

As Pope John Paul II taught, sins are personal before they are social. So too with the spiritual leprosy of "Vatican-centric" personalities, and the Vatican is not the only place where you can find such.