Catholics From Italy

"Isolation is not a new situation for Japanese Christians, it was like that even at the time of persecutions: even then they could not meet in churches, but they carried on faith in families. Today faced with the threat of the coronavirus and the impossibility of celebrating the Eucharist from a liturgical point of view, Christians, once again, are showing that faith can be equally lived in a profound way."

"I am not scared by the powerful since the Lord is with me."

"We are all called to be holy right where we are, amid everyday realities, despite our weaknesses and the difficulties we may face. By living in this way we can change the world."

"Music is a privileged language for communicating the Church's faith and for helping those who listen to your works on their journey of faith; through music too, you have exercised your priestly ministry. Your style follows in the wake of the great composers of sacred music, in particular for the Sistine Chapel which you directed for many years, by enhancing the precious treasure of Gregorian Chant and your wise use of polyphony, faithful to tradition but also open to new sounds."

"I grew up in Genoa, I carry with me above all, I have to tell the truth, the affections, the people I met in Genoa, who loved me like carrying my heart."

"Without Latin the repertory of the past is destined to be filed away. It is necessary to return to a liturgy that makes room for music, with a taste for the beautiful, and also to return to true sacred art."

"Growth in communion justifies the joy in Christians to be able to elevate a sincere thanksgiving to God, the concreteness of permanent divisions."

"Don Albino will lead us by the hand and help us find the path to a "holiness" accessible to everyone who desires to enter into the evangelical call of Jesus, addressed to all. Holiness as "lofty" inspiration certainly, but within the reach of every true disciple; holiness that is capable of dwelling in the ordinariness of one's own personal calling."

"Fifty years ago for several days the body of Luisa Piccarreta passed throughout Corato. The testimony of this evening suggests that her name is still alive among you and I would like it to be alive even in the whole diocese, because it is a glory for Corato but it is also a glory of the diocese. I wish that all of us could start to fall in love with this figure, meditating a little of her life."

"In the course of the years of formation, the students learn to understand what trust means: it is really faith, but it is a faith of abandonment, a faith of openness, of confidence through Mary by living with the Lord."

"We need to see God's work as a positive element of this situation. Jesus doesn't have hands, but he has our hands."

"An administrator has to be trustworthy, so the administrator is not the master, the administrator is not a slave who cannot decide anything, the administrator is somebody who has responsibility under somebody who stay over him and we know over us is Jesus Christ, so I invite you in your different responsibilities in the church to remember that we are administrators, not the masters."

"Newness, if it comes from God, brings always with it a going beyond of what already exists. Tradition, if it is authentic, receives and gives a solid base to new advances"

"We are diocesan bishops... and here a certain level of responsibility and institutional attention is required"

"I met Benedetti a couple of times back in the 1990s at theological gatherings in Rome, shortly after he retired from Foligno, and was struck by his gentleness and lack of pretense, despite his impressive résumé."

"In imitation of Christ – the Good Shepherd par excellence – the exercise of the pastoral governance coincides with the offering of a life to the point of full consummation of self. So Christ did, so did the holy pastors."

"As a bishop, I was never political, but I always tried to make my presence felt among the people, standing with them and defending them when necessary. I always spoke to everyone because I felt strongly that whoever was in front of me was, before anything else, a human being."

"In their search for happiness, they've discovered that it is found in an intense and fascinating relationship with Jesus, in giving of themselves to help others to get to know Him."

"It is necessary to "know oneself and to know". That is crucial. Respect for one's own dignity, for one's own freedom, one's own history, one's own presence is respect for the other who comes along, with his identity, with his consciousness. There is no other way."

"What binds me to my grandfather is certainly intransigent fidelity to the Holy See – naturally without indulging in the obsequiousness that can reach sickly forms of popolatry – and a conscience that must always remain on the alert."

"It's very simple: our people are a people who are not given to anxiously rushing about, prying or disturbing others. I think the basic attitude here is this: if the Pope likes to come here - and in some ways he chooses here because he knows that the conditions here favour rest – so be it. For my part, I have asked that there be a large participation at the Angelus and then in other times a great respect for him and his privacy. I believe, it is essential not to take advantage of his presence."

"I cannot hide all my bitterness, which I would have preferred to keep in the silence of a bleeding heart of a father. All I can do now is to entrust to God's mercy."

"The challenges which the Churches of America must face are also a genuine challenge for the Italian Church (I am referring, for example, to the cultural challenge). Therefore, some of the Synodal Fathers have stated as strategic or priority choices some things that should also be duly taken into account by us (for example the role of the lay faithful in a pluralist, multi-faceted society; our communities must urgent become authoritative in a way which is dynamic and alternative to the spirit of the world."

"Experience tells me that when there is great concern about cultivating this intrinsic dynamism in the Eucharistic celebration, the way of our communities and of the individual faithful becomes alive and strong."

"Today the Catholic Church in Turkey is called to move from an attitude of a Church with presence to a Church of witness: a Church which reflects on the meaning of its presence in Turkey."

"Art is certainly an instrument of evangelization, but I would like to emphasize that it is particularly so for the Christian experience, because the Christian experience is not an undefined spiritual experience, but the experience of a God who becomes flesh. This makes the visual representation of the mystery present in people, in the facts of history belong to the very core of faith and is not simply an addition to give greater conviction to the realities of faith."

"I think with affection of this dear brother in the episcopate, who served the Gospel with joy and wisdom and loved the Church tenaciously, recalling with gratitude his intense pastoral work, first as a zealous priest and auxiliary bishop, and then as an attentive and wise guide of the archdiocese. I raise fervent prayers to the Lord so that, by the intercession of St. John the Baptist and the blessed Virgin Mary, He welcome his faithful servant and distinguished pastor in heavenly Jerusalem."

"The most important thing for the Church, then, is not doing, but being: choosing, as Mary of Bethany, the better part, sitting at the feet of the Beloved and drinking His word with joy. Certainly not so as to live a solitary inwardness and hunched in on oneself, but so as to give strong witness of that Love, that through us wishes to reach all."

"Detachment was something that cost me a lot: detachment from my parents, Superiors, town, language, everything; when I boarded the steamer I said goodbye forever. We will see each other again in heaven."

"Since freedom and authentic values are intimately connected with the identity of the person, it is comprehensible that obedience, if it is not considered in the liberating light of the Holy Spirit, is instead considered as a beginning of maturity of the person and their creative freedom."

"The rhythms of the knowledge that comes from faith are slow. That is why revelation must also be hidden, veiled. Man's freedom is unable to bear the full weight of God's revelation. Thus the parables spring from the heart of Jesus urgency of the gospel; they are spontaneous, not artificial, they spring from life itself. The parables are, in this perspective, one of the most beautiful fruits of the mystery of the Incarnation, the frontier to which language is pushed by the Son of God, so that it may be adapted to communicate the mystery of the Kingdom in respect to the concrete situation of man."

"A drop of the divine is in every man. We are the dissimilar leaves of a single tree. It is not for me to distinguish the better leaves. Christ said: do not judge."

"Jesus' parable retains all its enigmatic charge, it leaves the listener with the task of understanding it, it challenges him and forces him to question himself, it involves him in the first person and engages him in the search for meaning. [...] the parables are an act of courtesy, of respect for human freedom, of condescension, almost of tenderness."

"(About Saint Ignatius of Loyola) He said it himself, he sinned long and hard, to quote Luther; his conversion was total, his expiation very long, accompanied by a love of life and works, including the foundation of a Company that after 400 years is still one of the pillars of our Church."

"Often the language used to talk about God is stunted and feeble, sometimes awkward, sometimes generic; one easily divides into verticalists and horizontalists, traditionalists and progressives, one makes judgements that, in the light of the Gospel, are at least inadequate."

"A voice like Pope Francis's, and before that the voice that was Cardinal Martini's in Milan, manages to touch chords that exist but that the everyday fails to prompt. Bergoglio's attention to the world of non-believers, for example, was the global dimension of something we had already seen with Martini and his chair of non-believers, that experiment in the Church that aroused much controversy from a part of the clergy and the faithful. It was an occasion, the one proposed by the cardinal of Milan, that was received with more attention precisely by the secular world than by the Church. With Pope Francis the same thing happened."

"Speaking of Jesus accompanies his actions and interprets them: the lordship of God is demonstrated through works and illustrated through words. [...] to authentically proclaim the Gospel it is necessary to some extent to veil it."

"Television has made it clear that my neighbour has no boundaries. Even in the Gospel, the neighbour in the parable of the Good Samaritan transcends boundaries, but television has made this clear to us..."

"Halloween is a type of celebration that is foreign to our tradition but has immense value and should be continued. The cult of the dead is part of our history: it is a time when hope for eternity is born. It is a time when the Lord makes us understand that life is more than just this earthly existence."

"Gianna Beretta Molla was a precious witness of conjugal and family spirituality, an authentic path of holiness."

"I personally believe that God created us man and woman and that therefore traditional moral doctrine has good reasons on this point. Of course, I am prepared to admit that in some cases good faith, lived experience, contracted habits, the unconscious and probably even a certain native inclination may lead one to choose for oneself a type of life with a same-sex partner. In today's world, such behaviour can therefore be neither demonised nor ostracised."

"Corriere della Sera reader: "I am an atheist, but I see beauty all around me." Cardinal Martini: "I am Catholic and you are an atheist, but ultimately we are united by the same wonder at creation.""

"Christ's resurrection is not a miracle. The God who through the Son assumed human nature, after his death on the cross reassumes his divine and immortal nature."

"I am also prepared to admit the value of an enduring friendship and faithfulness between two persons of the same sex. Friendship has always been held in great honour in the ancient world, perhaps more so than today, even though it was mostly understood in the context of that transcending of the purely physical sphere I mentioned above, to be a union of minds and hearts."

"The Bible speaks of God's infinite greatness, even of His immeasurability, of the fact that God is immensely greater than our hearts, our beings, our spirits. And so it would come as no surprise if data were to emerge about other planets being inhabited by other people; this would not affect the message of the Bible in any way."

"Greater familiarity of European men and women with the Sacred Scriptures leads towards that experience of burning fire in the heart which was experienced by the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The Bible read and prayed, in particular by young people, is the book of the future for the European continent."

"I believe that each of us has a non-believer and a believer in us, who talk to each other inside, questioning each other, constantly sending pointed and disturbing questions back to each other. The non-believer in me disquiets the believer in me and vice versa."

"Money given to priests is not their money, it belongs to the community. Priests must manage it. All of us, all pastors, must have communal sense to help one another."

"Poor victim, poor assassin, poor avenger. Poor is the society that created them. The young girl who succumbed to drugs, the young man who chopped her up, [and] the man who shot to avenge her, are three witnesses of a chain of failures that concern all of us."

"Evangelization will not be fruitful, unless we involve the local Christians."