For me, it is one of the 'signs of the times' that the idea of God's mercy is becoming increasingly central and dominant.
— Pope Benedict XVI
The Church is not self-made, it was created by God and is continuously formed by Him. This finds expression in the Sacraments, above all in that of Baptism: I enter into the Church not by a bureaucratic act, but with the help of this Sacrament.
You can't talk about what you haven't felt.
The principle of tolerance and respect for freedom promoted by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council are today being manipulated and erroneously taken too far.
This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness... than the desires of the moment.
Our Earth is talking to us, and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive.
The counterweight to the dominion of evil can consist in the first place only in the divine-human love of Jesus Christ that is always greater than any possible power of evil.
A form of reason that in some way wished to strip itself of beauty would be diminished; it would be a blinded reason.
Loving the church also means having the courage to make difficult, trying choices, having ever before oneself the good of the church and not one's own.
God guides his church, maintains her always, and especially in difficult times. Let us never lose this vision of faith, which is the only true vision of the way of the church and the world.
Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made.
Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: 'What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?'
The church is not a political power; it's not a party, but it's a moral power.
The Eucharistic sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ embraces in turn the mystery of our Lord's continuing passion in the members of his mystical body, the church in every age.
If we look to the saints, this great luminous wake with which God has passed through history, we truly see that here is a force for good that survives through millennia; here is truly light from light.
God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world: peace in the hearts of all men and women and peace among the nations of the Earth.
The Gospel purifies and renews: it bears fruit wherever the community of believers hears and welcomes the grace of God in truth and lives in charity. This is my faith; this is my joy.
Mercy is what moves us toward God, while justice makes us tremble in his sight.
In the harshness of the world of technology - in which feelings do not count anymore - the hope for a saving love grows, a love which would be given freely and generously.
Germany has an established and well-furnished Catholicism, often with employed Catholics who handle the church like a labor union. For them, the church is simply the employer.
In the 20th century, in the darkest period of German and European history, an insane racist ideology, born of neopaganism, gave rise to the attempt, planned and systematically carried out by the regime, to exterminate European Jews. The result has passed into history as the Shoah.
We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive.
Faith is not a product of reflection, nor is it even an attempt to penetrate the depths of my own being.
The Church must introduce the individual Christian into an encounter with Jesus Christ and bring Christians into His presence in the sacrament.
We have to pay attention to developing well, in the correct manner, the human aspects also in the professions, in respect of other persons, in being concerned for others, which is the best way of being concerned for ourselves.
I no longer wield the power of the office for the government of the church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, within St. Peter's bounds. St. Benedict, whose name I bear as pope, shall be a great example in this for me. He showed us the way to a life which, active or passive, belongs wholly to the work of God.
Human rights, of course, must include the right to religious freedom, understood as the expression of a dimension that is at once individual and communitarian - a vision that brings out the unity of the person while clearly distinguishing between the dimension of the citizen and that of the believer.
In the name of freedom, there has to be a correlation between rights and duties, by which every person is called to assume responsibility for his or her choices, made as a consequence of entering into relations with others.
In Latin America in general, it's very important that Christianity not be simply a thing of reason, but also of the heart.
It's a great responsibility before God, the judge who guides us, who draws us to truth and good, and in this sense the church must unmask evil, rendering present the goodness of God, rendering present his truth, the truly infinite for which we are thirsty.
The reality of the Eucharistic sacrifice has always been at the heart of Catholic faith; called into question in the 16th century, it was solemnly reaffirmed at the Council of Trent against the backdrop of our justification in Christ.
I would say it simply: No one can give that which he doesn't personally possess, which means we cannot transmit the Holy Spirit in an effective way, render the Spirit perceptible, if we ourselves aren't close to the Spirit.
The Lord has placed next to me many people, who, with generosity and love for God and the church, have helped me and been close to me.
Both need each other: The agnostic cannot be content to not know, but must be in search of the great truth of faith; the Catholic cannot be content to have faith, but must be in search of God all the time, and in the dialogue with others, a Catholic can learn more about God in a deeper fashion.
We need Grace and forgiveness.
The truth touches us. We try to be guided by this contact.
The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah was a crime against God and against humanity.
The family unit is fundamental for the educational process and for the development both of individuals and states; hence there is a need for policies which promote the family and aid social cohesion and dialogue.
We all see that, today, man can destroy the foundation of his existence: his Earth.
On the one hand, faith is a profoundly personal contact with God, which touches me in my innermost being and places me in front of the living God in absolute immediacy in such a way that I can speak with Him, love Him, and enter into communion with Him.
All the great works of art, the cathedrals - the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches - are a luminous sign of God, and thus are truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.
We pray that the Lord may help us to produce His light in ourselves, even in dark days, so that we might be light for others, illuminating the world and life in this world.
In our heart, in the heart of each of you, let there be always the joyous certainty that the Lord is near, that he does not abandon us, that he is near to us, and that he surrounds us with his love.
The life of the community, both domestically and internationally, clearly demonstrates that respect for rights, and the guarantees that follow from them, are measures of the common good that serve to evaluate the relationship between justice and injustice, development and poverty, security and conflict.
The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation.
Since politics fundamentally should be a moral enterprise, the church in this sense has something to say about politics.
How much we need, in the church and in society, witnesses of the beauty of holiness, witnesses of the splendour of truth, witnesses of the joy and freedom born of a living relationship with Christ!
The outpouring of Christ's blood is the source of the church's life.
For me, it's a great joy to be together with priests: in the end, the bishop of Rome is the bishop and brother of all priests. His mandate is to confirm the brothers in the faith.
I would like everyone to feel loved by the God who gave his son for us and showed us his boundless love. I want everyone to feel the joy of being Christian.
