Pope acknowledges right-wing critics

Pope Francis has acknowledged his increasingly vocal conservative critics, saying their “nasty comments” were the work of the devil.

Francis made the comments during a September 12 private meeting with Slovakian Jesuits soon after he arrived in the Slovak capital of Bratislava. A transcript of the encounter was published on September 21 by the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, which often provides accounts of Francis’s closed-door meetings with his fellow Jesuits when he’s on the road.

Francis showed his dark sense of humor throughout the encounter, particularly when a priest asked him how he was feeling. The September 12–15 Hungary-Slovakia trip was Francis’s first international outing since undergoing surgery in July to remove a 13-inch chunk of his large intestine.