Pope Francis this morning gave an incredibly powerful homily on the scandals that have plagued the church. While not mentioning them by name he went so far as to say that it was good that they have cost the church money. Scandal should cost, should be a source of shame. He again tells us the importance of remaining close to the Lord, of not disconnecting ourselves from the Word of God, From Jesus, from prayer. Christ must remain the center of our lives. When we become the center of our universe terrible things can happen.

Read a summary from CNS in part below:

When the church and the people of God suffer defeat, it is because people have closed their hearts to God, he said.

Defeat comes to people’s lives “simply because they don’t hear the Lord, they don’t seek the Lord, they don’t let themselves be sought by the Lord.”

After tragedy strikes, these same people, with their hardened hearts, then cry out to God, “Oh, Lord, what happened?” the pope said.

They make the same complaints, he said, found in the day’s responsorial Psalm (44:10-25): “You made us the reproach of our neighbors, the mockery and the scorn of those around us. … Why do you hide your face, forgetting our woe and our oppression?”

“But are we ashamed? (There are) so many scandals that I don’t want to mention them one by one, but we all know what they are. We know where they are,” he said.

Without mentioning the sexual abuse of minors by clergy, the pope said some of these scandals “made us pay a lot of money. Good! One has to do this.”

“The embarrassment of the church! But are we ashamed of these scandals, of these defeats of priests, of bishops, of laypeople?”

Rarely did any of the men and women who caused the church scandal have the Word of God rooted deeply in their lives, he said.

“They had a position within the church, a position of power, even luxuries. But not the Word of God,” the pope said.

Maybe they liked to show off their cross or insignia, but they carried it around like the people of Israel carried the ark, he said, “without a living relationship with God and the Word of God.”