In his annual address to the Roman Curia, Pope Francis outlined a set of virtues necessary to ensure good leadership in the Church. In 2014 Pope had used his address to list 15 “illnesses” the Curia is often prone to, such as “spiritual Alzheimer’s”, “existential schizophrenia”, “hypocrisy typical of the mediocre”, the “terrorism of gossip” and even a poor sense of humour. Diseases need “prevention, vigilance, care and, sadly in some cases, painful and prolonged interventions”, he said in this year’s talk in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican. The spiritual problems he highlighted in 2014 are still lingering, he said at last month’s 2015 address, and were “evident in the course of the past year, causing no small pain” to the whole body of the Church and “harming many souls, with scandal, too”, he said in his 30-minute talk. Treatment is necessary and the regimen entails getting back to basics, he said, for which he offered a “catalogue of needed virtues”. Such constant examination of what Christ demands of his disciples would always be necessary, he said. “The reform will move forward with determination, clarity and firm resolve,” he added, since the Church is always to be reformed. The papal catalogue was actually an acrostic, a list in which the first letter of each word spells out another word. In this case the word was misericordia, Italian for mercy. In an aside explaining his poetic format, he told his audience that Jesuit Fr Matteo Ricci would use acrostics when he evangelised in China. Mercy, the Pope explained, wasn’t some “fleeting sentiment”. It was the core teaching of the Gospel, the living “heart of Jesus” and, therefore, the light that needs to guide one’s life, reforms and decisions. “May it be the basis of all our efforts. May it teach us when to move forward and when to step back,” Francis said. “May it also enable us to understand the littleness of all that we do in God’s greater plan of salvation and majestic and mysterious working.” Observers said, the list of 24 virtues seeks to underline the Pope’s approach since the start of his pontificate: honesty, humility, open doors, trust in God and others as well as his Jesuit focus on mission, community and discipline.