Pope Francis embraces newly-elected Cardinal Jean-Pierre Kutwa of Ivory Coast during a consistory ceremony in Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on Saturday. Photo: Reuters

Pope Francis yesterday 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, Pope Francis has often told his top aides not to live or behave like a privileged class.

The eight-year papacy of his predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict, was marked by mishaps and missteps, which were often blamed on a dysfunctional Vatican bureaucracy and intrigue befitting a Renaissance court.

Yesterday Pope Francis celebrated a Mass with 18 of the 19 new cardinals who were elevated to that rank on Saturday. One could not attend because of illness.

“A cardinal enters the Church of Rome, not a royal court,” the Pope 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, favouritism and preferences,” he said during a solemn ceremony.

Catholic leaders should be good servants, not good bosses

“Jesus did not come to teach us good manners or to behave as if we were at a social gathering,” Pope Francis told them.

It was the second consecutive day that the Pope had warned cardinals to shun worldly temptations in the corridors of clerical power, either at home or in the nerve centre of the 1.2 billion-member Church.

At the induction ceremony on Saturday, which was attended by ex-pope Benedict, Pope Francis urged the cardinals to avoid rivalries and factions.

It was the first time Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict, who resigned on February 28, 2013, had been together for a liturgical celebration.

The “Vatileaks” scandal, in which Benedict’s butler was arrested for leaking the Pope’s private papers to the media, alleged corruption in the Holy See, something the Vatican denied.

He asked the new cardinals to remain united among themselves and with him as they advise and help him run the Church in the Vatican and beyond in a spirit of simplicity and service.