They've always preferred the darkness.

I dunno, snopes seems to think that in context this is an exaggeration, but I'm less reliant on them alone these days. The wiki page on Greg does affirm that it seems to have happened, and pegs the source on this as McBrien, Richard (2000), Lives of the Popes.

So there may or may not be mitigating context here, but from what I'm reading the man was such a grundle that we owe him nothing. Amusingly, it seems he was quite intensely conservative, even as far as having opposed rail, calling them "roads to hell".

Let's go back to the old ways, get rid of street lighting but make it illegal to be outside after dark without a torch.

According to Thoughty, the pope may have had a point, but for the wrong reasons. There used to be more polyphasic sleepers in the world before we had lights at night.

throttle of evolution