The headline makes it sound like he believes there's a mole within the Vatican, but reading the article it sounds like he means that there's an "elegant demon" living within each of us that may tempt us to judge others too harshly.
Primary source:<p><a href="https://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/2022-12/ing-051/in-need-of-conversion.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/2022-12/ing-051/in-...</a><p>With some context:<p><i>Our initial conversion follows a certain pattern: the evil that we acknowledge and try to uproot from our lives does indeed leave us, but we would be naïve to think that it will long be gone. In short order, it comes back under a new guise. Before, it appeared rough and violent, now it shows up as elegant and refined. We need to realize that and once again to unmask it. Let me put it this way: they are “elegant demons”: they enter smoothly, without our even being conscious of them. Only the daily practice of the examination of conscience can enable us to be aware of them.</i><p>[EDIT: the reason I can't reconcile the next bit is because I was confused. Ignore it.]<p>The next paragraph cites a nun who became a heretic (on a rather abstruse piece of doctrine). That's really a problem in that she was a TV personality, for a group of conservative Catholics who push a culture-war approach that often puts them at odds with the Vatican, especially the comparatively liberal Francis.<p>And I'm not quite sure how to reconcile that. I'm quite certain that Mother Angelica did examine her conscience quite closely. In many ways Mother Angelica was quite <i>in</i>elegant, and rather outspoken. Perhaps she was listening too closely to an "elegant demon", but I'm not sure if any amount of introspection would have revealed flaws to her.
In another life I was a practicing Catholic and if you haven't, the book of Revelation is an actually interesting sci-fi post-apocolyptic fan fic, especially the dramatized renditions like the Left Behind book series (movies are terrible).<p>Revelation describes the anti-christ in a similar fashion. Is the Pope implying Lucifer has returned? I wonder if the Vatican even takes Revelation as true dogma in practice too, since it is somewhat off-the-wall.
For anyone not aware, this is standard stuff for many Catholic parishes.<p>Every blessed Sunday, in addition to the other Mass rituals, the content is a few readings from the Bible, capped by a homily (a lecture the priest has written) about how to improve as people, or to do some good.<p>(Not that I'm advocating Catholicism or any other kind of organized religion. Just mentioning it because I know a lot of people weren't brought up in a tradition like that, and the external news is going to give a distorted picture. Just like a lot of people brought up sheltered in a religion have a distorted idea of people not in that one. This gap of understanding can be funny, in that you have a lot of, say, Christians and secular liberals, who're suspicious and critical of each other, when in some respects they have especially strong overlap of values, such as helping those less fortunate. Recognizing those overlaps seems like it might help speed up finding more common ground on the actual differences -- of which there are some whoppers, but there's slow progress.)
'Elegant demon' lurks there all right <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABSoHYQr6k">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABSoHYQr6k</a>