The Vatican's top cultural official on Friday hit out at sermons he said were too often dreary and bland and urged Catholic priests not to shy away from spicing up their preaching.Speaking at a conference organised by a French institute, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi said preaching in churches "was so dull and vapid that it had become quite meaningless."
To yank drowsy church-goers to attention, the Italian cardinal urged priests to jazz up their vocabulary and not be afraid of letting the "scandal" contained in the Bible erupt from the pulpit.
Ravasi argued that priests needed to be in sync with their time and adapt to a high-paced, tech-savvy world.
"The advent of televised and computerised information requires us to be compelling and trenchant, to cut to the heart of the matter, resort to narratives and colour," he said.
He praised micro-blogging site Twitter as a tool that "forces to deliver something in a flash, something primal."