Gossip is “a plague worse than COVID,” Pope Francis said, asserting that while speaking ill of others comes almost naturally, it is a tool of the devil to divide the church.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has put the brakes on most foreign travel and many in-person meetings, Pope Francis still has some major events on his fall 2020 agenda.

The new encyclical will bear the title “Fratelli tutti” and it will be released on the feast of St. Francis on Oct. 3.

As many people around the world face economic uncertainty due to the pandemic, a paradigm shift is needed, Pope Francis said.

Between 2007 and the publication of “Laudato Si’” in 2015, Pope Francis “underwent a journey of conversion, of conversion of the ecological problem. Before that I didn’t understand anything.”

Pope Francis concluded: “We do not come out from a crisis the same as before. We either come out better or worse. We must choose. Solidarity is the way to come out better.”