At end-of-year celebrations, some bosses give their employees gifts of appreciation and extend warm wishes. On Saturday, Pope Francis used his annual Christmas message to the leaders of the Vatican’s various departments to admonish them.

Again.

“A church community lives in joyful and fraternal harmony to the extent that its members walk in the life of humility, renouncing thinking the worst and speaking ill of others,” Francis told the cardinals and prelates who make up the Vatican’s administration.

He also touched on a personal bugaboo: gossip.

“Gossip is an evil that destroys social life, sickens people’s hearts and leads to nothing,” Francis said.

For years, Francis has used his Christmas message to the Curia, as the Vatican administration is known, to air his concerns about the workplace environment in the tiny city-state and to urge his top advisers to do some soul-searching.

He opened off-topic on Saturday with a reminder of the devastation of the war in Gaza, in what appeared to be a reference to deadly Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Friday.

“Yesterday, children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” he said. “I want to say it, because it touches the heart.”