“To choose such ministers we all need to raise our sights, to move to a higher level,” the Pope told the Congregation for Bishops, the clearinghouse for bishop nominees, on Thursday. “We can’t do anything less, and can’t be content with the bare minimum,” the Pontiff said in a strongly worded message to the Catholic hierarchy.

Earlier on February 19, Pope Francis told 19 new cardinals he appointed to avoid “rivalry, jealousy, factions,” and at a Mass in the Vatican the following day, he said they must reject “habits and ways of acting typical of a court: intrigue, gossip, cliques, favoritism and preferences.”

Francis also has repeatedly called on clerics to live simply and humbly, and in his address Thursday to the cardinals and staff who make up the Congregation for Bishops, he urged them to lead a life of self-denial and sacrifice.

He exhorted them to find “authentic” pastors who display “professionalism, service and holiness of life.”

Bishops, he continued, should be “guardians of doctrine, not to measure how far the world lives from the truth it contains, but to fascinate the world, to enchant the world with the beauty of love, to seduce it with the free gift of the Gospel.”

“The Church doesn’t need apologists for their own agendas or crusaders for their own battles,” he added, “but humble and faithful sowers of the truth.”

Since he was elected March 13, 2013, Pope Francis has made it clear that he wants to improve the quality of bishops and that he will have no patience for ambitious ladder-climbers who look for a bigger diocese or a cardinal’s hat.

The pope has blasted hierarchical “careerism” as “a form of cancer” and derided bishops who strut about in church finery as “peacocks.” He has called on bishops to be pastors who are close to the flock and not “airport bishops” who buzz around the world padding their resumes.

In his talk Thursday, Pope Francis also repeated the words from a speech last June about the kind of bishops he wants, reiterating that candidates should not have the “psychology of princes” and they should not commit “adultery” by constantly seeking another diocese. He asked the congregation to prepare a new document about the rules on how much time bishops should spend in their dioceses.

Under the current system, when a diocese needs a new bishop the papal representative, or nuncio, in each country consults with clergy and others in the diocese and national hierarchy and sends a list of candidates and their dossiers to the Congregation for Bishops in Rome.

The congregation’s members — about 30 cardinals and bishops who work at the Vatican or fly in from their own dioceses — meet periodically to vet the candidates before sending a list of three names to the pope; he usually chooses from that list but can sometime pick another candidate.

Church officials in Rome say Francis has not always been satisfied with the nominees he’s been given and wants to push to change the type of candidates.