‘No whining’ - Papal door sign attracts attention during apartment sealing

When the Vatican published a photo Tuesday of Cardinal Kevin Farell sealing the doors of Pope Francis’ suite in the Domus Sancta Marta, eagle-eyed Catholics spotted a sign on the door of the pope’s room, with a simple message: “Vietato Lamentarsi,” — no whining.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell seals the papal apartment April 22. Credit: Vatican Media.

According to AFP News, Pope Francis was given the sign by psychologist Salvo Noe, during a June 2017 audience.

The placard — which is configured to look like an Italian ‘no smoking’ sign — warns that complainers “are subject to developing a victim complex, resulting in a lowering... of their capacity to solve problems."

"To be your best you have to focus on your own potential and not on your limits, so stop whining and act to make your life better," the sign warns, warning that the “penalties” for whining are “doubled in the presence of children.”

When the pope received the sign, he initially told aides that he would put it on his office door, presumably at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

But instead, the sign was hung on the pope’s bedroom door, where it apparently remained for almost eight years.

Credit: Vatican Media.

The sign drew attention when the Vatican released a photo of Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Vatican’s cardinal camerlengo, overseeing the sealing of the pontiff’s suite of rooms at the Vatican guesthouse where he lived.

Before those rooms were sealed, Farrell oversaw the customary sealing of the papal apartment in the Vatican’s apostolic palace, which is the official residence of the pontiff, even while Francis chose not to live there.

Salve Noe is an Italian psychologist and the author of numerous self-help guides, who indicates on his website that he had “worked closely” with Pope Francis, even being dubbed in Italian media the “pope’s psychologist.”