Stop trolling, resist gossiping and consider putting down your device altogether.

That is Pope Francis’ advice for how to be holy online, snippets of wisdom from his new apostolic exhortation released on Monday, “Gaudete et Exsultate,” or “Rejoice and Be Glad: On the Call To Holiness in Today’s World.”


The pope takes on “verbal violence” that is common on “the internet and various forums of digital communication.”

Stop trolling, resist gossiping and consider putting down your device altogether.

Pope Francis is no stranger to social media. He holds the record for amassing one million followers on Instagram in the shortest amount of time, and he is one of the most influential world leaders on Twitter, followed by more than 40 million accounts. His concern about “verbal violence” perhaps means that he has glanced at replies to his tweets, which are often filled with vulgarities, attacks on Catholicism or even condemnations from other Catholics. Or maybe he is still recoiling from when President Trump called him “not Pope-like” back in 2013? Whatever the cause, the pope wants temperatures to cool down.

Francis touches on more than just social media in his new exhortation, the third of his pontificate, critiquing some online outlets that purport to be Catholic in nature but that engage in unsavory activities.

“Even in Catholic media, limits can be overstepped, defamation and slander can become commonplace, and all ethical standards and respect for the good name of others can be abandoned,” he writes.

“It is striking, at times, in claiming to uphold the other commandments, they completely ignore the eighth.”

Francis refrains from offering specific examples, of course, but it is not difficult to imagine what he has in mind. In North America alone, there are many well-funded Catholic sites and numerous Catholic blogs whose aim is often to slander and malign fellow Catholics who, in the eyes of these writers, believe or live the Catholic faith incorrectly.

“The result is a dangerous dichotomy,” Francis writes, “since things can be said there that would be unacceptable in public discourse, and people look to compensate for their own discontent by lashing out at others.”

He takes special aim at online behavior that is misleading, either through innuendo or tenuous ties to suspect people or ideologies.

“It is striking, at times, in claiming to uphold the other commandments, they completely ignore the eighth,” he writes, “which forbids bearing false witness or lying, and ruthlessly vilify others.”

“Here we see how the unguarded tongue, set on fire by hell, sets all things ablaze,” he writes.

(Coincidentally, Francis invokes the image of hell to condemn misleading news or commentary. It was just a couple of weeks ago that a 93-year-old journalist who met with the pope without taking notes or recording the conversation reported that Francis had denied hell’s existence, leading to a flurry of condemnation from traditionalist Catholics who have repeatedly criticized the pope for sowing confusion.)

The pope warns against spreading gossip, which previously he called a form of “terrorism,” in a section on Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels.

“Here we see how the unguarded tongue, set on fire by hell, sets all things ablaze.”

Reflecting on the beatitudes, Francis says that when Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers,” Christians often think of “many endless situations of war in our world.” But, he asks, what are the more personal situations that could benefit from a peacemaker?

“I may hear something about someone and I go off and repeat it,” he writes as an example. “I may even embellish it the second time around and keep spreading it.”

Though Francis does not point to social media specifically, he writes that people who gossip seek to harm the target, which leads to the gossiper taking even “more satisfaction” in the slander.

“The world of gossip, inhabited by negative and destructive people, does not bring peace,” he says. “Such people are really the enemies of peace; in no way are they ‘peacemakers.’”

“The world of gossip, inhabited by negative and destructive people, does not bring peace.”

While the pope wants people to behave better online, he is also worried about the impact digital culture is having on our ability to discern, which he said is necessary to understand if something comes from God or from the devil.

“The gift of discernment has become all the more necessary today, since contemporary life offers immense possibilities for action and distraction, and the world presents all of them as valid and good,” he writes.

He said all people, but especially the young, “are immersed in a culture of zapping.”

“We can navigate simultaneously on two or more screens and interact at the same time with two or three virtual scenarios,” he writes. “Without the wisdom of discernment, we can easily become prey to every passing trend.”

According to Francis, constant distraction because of too much screentime is making us unable to reflect seriously on choices we have to make in life. And this leads to the pope’s advice about silence.

Francis does not endorse silence full stop. He thinks it is sometimes an excuse to flee “interaction with others, to want peace and quiet while avoiding activity, to seek prayer while disdaining service.”

But, he said, people should not ignore “the need for moments of quiet solitude and silence before God.”

Which, he writes, is in short supply thanks to the “presence of constantly new gadgets, the excitement of travel and an endless array of consumer goods” that “at times leave no room for God’s voice to be heard.”

“We are overwhelmed by words,” he writes, “by superficial pleasures and by an increasing din, filled not by joy but rather by the discontent of those whose lives have lost meaning.”