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The cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord's vineyard.
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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.
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It is very important for a priest, in the parish itself, to see how people trust in him and to experience, in addition to their trust, also their generosity in pardoning his weaknesses.
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I leave from where the apostle arrived.
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Rights presuppose duties, if they are not to become mere licence
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My plans never progressed as far as a clear desire for a family.
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In and of itself, the market is not, and must not become, the place where the strong subdue the weak.
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In reality, I am more a professor, one who reflects and mediates on spiritual questions. Practical governance is not my strong point, and this is certainly a weakness. But I do not see myself as a failure. For eight years, I carried out my work.
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Certainly a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.
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We can be tempted to make the life of faith a matter of mere sentiment, thus blunting its power to inspire a consistent vision of the world and a rigorous dialogue with the many other visions competing for the minds and hearts of our contemporaries.
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'There is more joy in giving than in receiving.' Never doubt the truth of our Lord's promise that whatever we give him of our creativity, our resources, our persons, will come back to us in abundance.
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There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere.
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The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
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Today we bury his remains in the earth as a seed of immortality. Our hearts are full of sadness, yet at the same time of joyful hope and profound gratitude.
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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.
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We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive.
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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.
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Above all, we must have great respect for these people who also suffer and who want to find their own way of correct living. On the other hand, to create a legal form of a kind of homosexual marriage, in reality, does not help these people.
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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.
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We need Grace and forgiveness.
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I would designate as science fiction in the best sense: they are visions and anticipations by which we seek to attain a true knowledge, but, in fact, they are only imaginations whereby we seek to draw near to the reality.
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Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.
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The wrath of God is a way of saying that I have been living in a way that is contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins to live and grow away from God, who lives away from what is good, is turning his life toward wrath.
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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.