Rome Reports: Pope resumes morning Mass at Santa Marta: 'Don't kill others with your tongue'

Text of Pope's homily

(Source: Vatican Radio)
“Look at how things have changed: They began with beauty and admiration, and they ended in a crime: wanting to kill Jesus. All this because of jealousy, envy, all these things. This is not something that has happened 2000 years ago, this is happening each day, in our hearts, in our communities. When someone new enters a community, on the first day they will speak of him well; on the second not so well; and from the third on, gossip and badmouthing starts to spread and end up skinning him”

“Those within a community that talk about their brothers, or their members, they want to kill. It's the same as when Apostle John, in his First Letter, says: 'The man who actively hates his brother is a potential murderer.' We are used to backbiting, to gossip. But how many times our communities, even our families have become a hell in which we criminally kill our brother with words.”

“So that there is peace in a community, in a family, in a country, in the world, we must be with the Lord. And where the Lord is, there is no envy, there is no criminality, there is no hatred, and there are no jealousies. There is brotherhood. Let this be our prayer to the Lord: never kill your neighbor with words. We must live with the Lord and be 'like heaven.'”