Pope Francis urged Cardinals, who make up the top echelon of the Roman Catholic Church, to shun the intrigue, gossip and cliques typical of a royal court.

Since his election nearly a year ago, Francis has often told his top aides not to live or behave like a privileged class.  The eight-year papacy of his predecessor, Benedict, was marked by mishaps and missteps, which were often blamed on a dysfunctional Vatican bureaucracy and intrigue befitting a Renaissance court.

Francis celebrated  Mass with 18 of the 19 new Cardinals who were elevated to that rank at the weekend.  One could not attend because of illness.  “A Cardinal enters the Church of Rome, not a royal court”, Francis said in his sermon, welcoming the men into the elite group that help him run the Church in the Vatican and around the world.

“May all of us avoid, and help others to avoid, habits and ways of acting typical of a court intrigue, gossip, cliques, favoritism and preferences”, he said during a solemn ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica.

It was the second consecutive day that Francis had warned Cardinals to shun worldly temptations in the corridors of clerical power, either at home or in the nerve center of the 1.2 billion-memberChurch.

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