Whether it's listing their “spiritual diseases” or denouncing them for living like princes, throughout his papacy Francis has been tough on any priest or bishop he thinks is clinging on to old privileges and rigid certainties. 

It is precisely such people that many of the Pope’s supporters believe are frustrating his vision of creating a more compassionate, pastoral and mission-focused Church. “The main obstacle that stands in the way of the conversion that Pope Francis wants to bring to the Church is constituted, in some measure, by the attitude of a good part of the clergy, at levels high and low,” according to an article this week in the Vatican’s in-house newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, written by Italian scripture scholar, Giulio Cirignano.