A new reform is being studied to include the "Liturgy of slander" in the rituals

A NEW REFORM IS BEING STUDIED TO INSERT THE «LITURGY OF MALEDICTION» INTO THE RITUALS

"Hate, that in your providence you allow your children to edify one another by talking behind their backs, lay off, for the intercession of Santa Sfranta, virgin and martyr, to never be caught out with evidence, names or dates".

Author
Simone Pifizzi

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It's with great relief that we can finally announce how long the base has been — indeed, the database – he claimed: after centuries of honored informal service, Slander is preparing to receive the dignity it deserves.

Well informed sources - which by statute remain anonymous, as it is obvious that it is the matter in question - they report that a special Commission is studying the inclusion in the near future, in the liturgical books of the sacraments and sacramentals, of a real one Rite of Slander. He confided it to us, in confidence, a high prelate who asked to remain anonymous, obviously.

If the liturgy is you culmen background of the life of the Church, as the Council teaches, it was time to recognize liturgically what already exists in practice, give time, the true culmination and true source of many ecclesial conversations: not the Eucharist, but the latest rumor. The work of the Commission, the usual well-informed sources inform, they would have concentrated on three main nuclei. First of all the Income, no more «Introibo altar Gods», but a more updated «Introibo in the curial gossip WhatsApp group», accompanied by a responsorial psalm whose antiphon he will recite: «I heard that…», with the responsory: «And it seems to me too…».

Then the I confess, appropriately revised in a pastoral sense: no longer «I confess to almighty God and to you, siblings, that I have sinned a lot", but rather a more streamlined «I confess to you, siblings, how much that other one sinned", with relative immediate acquittal for the accuser, who by acting "for the good of the Church" enjoys automatic dispensation from the examination of conscience.

Finally the Gospel, for which one would be considered Lectio continues taken from a recently discovered apocryphal text, the so-called Gospel according to the Anonymous, whose incipit - already leaked from our strictly anonymous sources - reads: «In the beginning he was the Suspect, and the Suspect was at the Algorithm, and the Suspicion was the Algorithm".

As per practice for every new rite, the identification of a Patron Saint could not be missed. The choice is clear to us, always from the reliable anonymous sources who revealed it to us, it would have fallen on a figure hitherto unjustly neglected by official hagiography: Saint Sfranta virgin and martyr, mysticism lived - apparently - by neither eating nor drinking, but feeding exclusively on rumors collected and promptly redistributed in a strictly confidential manner. His liturgical feast, provisionally set for April 1st, among its own texts includes a collective prayer of rare theological depth:

Having said all this — and here, dear readers, the Tuscan Florentine irony willingly lays down its weapons - a fact remains that has very little of the comic about it: behind every "they say", behind every source that «for reasons you will understand prefers to remain anonymous», behind every article that accuses, without ever qualifying the accusation, ensuring "a highly informed person who must remain anonymous for safety", behind every denunciatory letter sent to the bishops, there are real people. Priests who stop sleeping at night, bishops who are judged on the basis of a joke about their diction, co-workers leaving an office slamming the door because someone, without signing, decided that their reputation was an acceptable price to pay for a few more views in shots gossip deriving from "very reliable anonymous sources".

Slander does not need a new liturgy to be celebrated: already celebrates it, Every day, anyone who writes an accusation without showing their face and anyone who reads it without wondering who is really behind that keyboard. There is no need to invent a ritual. Just look in the mirror — or, for those who prefer, look at your own home page and your own blog where anonymity triumphs, except to guarantee that everything comes from "highly informed sources".

Florence, 24 August 2026

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