Catholics From Italy

"A loud call goes out to the entire Christian world to continue to heed the message of St Paul, Apostle of the Nations, who spoke and wrote to the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Colossians, the Thessalonians, the Jews and the Romans in his time, and continues today to speak to the Nations on every continent."

"He gave the witness of a particularly intense and competent commitment both from a pastoral and organizational, and an artistic-cultural point of view, endeavouring to restore spiritual vitality to the entire complex and new zeal to the ecumenical vocation of that place of worship."

"I see Vatican II in continuity with all the ecumenical councils, not as a shooting star, but as part of a constellation, though having some of its own characteristics. Hence, it does not constitute a break, a sort of birth of a new Church."

"I think we need the Samaritan's sensitivity. This doesn't only involve doing things for others, but handling the other person's situation."

"The Pope spoke to us about the political, scientific, religious dimensions, constituent of modern humanism, and hoped that governors, the men of science and thought, and the spiritual guides of the great non-Christian religions should be the Magi of today. In the aforesaid challenges Benedict XVI has a supreme responsibility, and he undertakes it in an admirable way, with much science and much wisdom."

"My wish for you is that you may persevere in the Christian faith. It is true that you are but a small group. However, do not forget that you are in communion with the one universal Church, the Church of Rome, and the Holy Father. In the two months since my arrival in Bangkok, I have come to know this Church well enough to appreciate it."

"Tonight, we pay tribute to the first missionary, her faith in the Annunciation leads Mary to visit Elizabeth, with the announcement of Christ... The event that had taken place deep inside her becomes a message that is "broadcast" as news."

"Jesus Christ and His Church are our life, our passion; in Him and in Her we wish to grow ever more ourselves and help others to grow. This growth is the goal of the new evangelization and of the Ad Gentes mission."

"Patience is needed to travel this path at a pace dictated by the Heart of the disciples, by the Heart of the Church. It is patience that the Vicars of Christ, the Bishops, are called to cultivate and here we see how difficult the episcopal mission is."

"I did not agree with all his positions, but this only made our conversations more lively and memorable. We spent long hours of the evening and night during my visits to , where I would normally stay in the Archbishop’s apartment, discussing politics, religion, and pretty much everything, with Casale’s sister periodically and silently appearing to offer an incredible variety of local cookies and beverages. Later, became also part of these lengthy domestic conversations. ...It was precisely because of his natural empathy with all sort of discriminated minorities that Casale also understood the injustices vested on new religious movements. He was critical both of the secular anti-cult movement and of some excesses of Catholic counter-cultists. He remained, however, firstly a Roman Catholic bishop, something members of new religious movements captivated by his natural sympathy and Southern Italian humor, and hoping for more support, sometimes risked to forget."

"Society is evolving rapidly and so are the conditions in which people live their faith. I am sure that the Church in Zimbabwe will be able to profit from its rich history and the faith, commitment, professionalism, and zeal of so many Priests, religious and lay people in order to face creativity in the new times that are ahead of us."

"We firmly believe that the contribution of the social doctrine of the Church and of the Pope's Magisterium can offer support even in a pluralistic society such as that of today."

"I have been able to listen to different people in difficulty; they have always said that they have been very impressed by the dedication of the priests and religious, by their concern and awareness of the suffering. It has been thanks to this that they have begun to believe in God."

"Denounce the spreading culture of death and state the whole truth on life and the family in the light of the Gospel and Church teaching and speak out in favour of a culture of life and the family."

"The Pope chose to go to the periphery because that is where the sufferings the people live are to be found—real life. It is a sign of his concern for those living in Rome, a way of showing he is near."

""Stop" is the cry expressed by the Church in the name of abused humanity. The United States must also stop and I think it has the strength to do so. It must re-establish respect for human beings and return to the family of nations, overcoming the temptation to act on its own. If it does not stop, the whirlwind of horror will involve other peoples and will lead us ever more to the abyss."

"Living the Inhabitation is not an extraordinary thing, but the logical consequence of our Baptism."

"[Christ's pain] is ours as all things belong to us and Him together. We take this supreme gift from the Master and bring it back to Him in the bosom of the Trinity... so that through Him it may be presented to the Father and become precious in His eyes. Then the pain of a small soul becomes again the pain of Christ, of the humanised Word, and is transformed into a source of grace... for many souls."

"Make the indwelling (of the three divine Persons in me) the centre of my life."

"After the transition from tenacious adolescent atheism to an unconditional and persevering surrender to God, Itala faced the ascent to the mountain of holiness by overcoming every psychological and spiritual obstacle...In addition to prayer and advice, Itala, despite her less than florid financial circumstances, was generous with charity. In Blessed Itala Mela, the Church leaves behind a message of confidence in the possibility of the laity not only to live Christian holiness to the full, but also to be creators and protagonists of the cultural and spiritual renewal of society. (Angelo Amato)"

"To live the Inhabitation is to live one's Baptism. It would be a grave error to believe that calling souls to nourish their lives with this adorable mystery is to call them to a special "devotion": it is rather an invitation to live by the grace that Baptism has given them, to penetrate the divine reality promised to us by Jesus: Veniemus et apud eum mansionem faciemus."

"Never forget that in our soul is the dwelling place of the Most Holy Trinity, as in a new heaven. We often strive to unite ourselves with God by complicated means and do not think that we always have within us, as long as we are in a state of grace, the divine Guest....... If among our occupations we would often collect ourselves for a single moment within ourselves and make contact with a single thought with the Most Holy Trinity, who deigns to sanctify our hearts, we would soon discover infinite treasures."

"It is necessary to be extremely cautious, because if hatred is fostered with a spirit of vengeance, the fundamentalists are given the possibility to have more power, and the terrorists the opportunity to recruit other terrorists more easily."

"It is absolutely necessary to remember; to remember helps to prevent. A people that does not remember is destined to repeat the errors it has forgotten. It is necessary to remember, also by observing the tragic situations of today: Humanity is always at the edge of a precipice; it is capable of repeating these tragedies.”"

"There are particularly large dioceses and archdioceses that require, among other things, particular gifts for pastoral government. I don't think it unreasonable or inadvisable to appoint to such Sees a churchman who has already given fair proof of himself in a less complex diocese. That then there may be people who maneuver to "make a career", that lies in the nature of things, it's a matter of human temptation. Even we churchmen are not immune from original sin..."

"The ideal would be for priests to live a community life and have several common-rooms available. At least the priests of a single pastoral unit in a given place should be able to meet for two or three hours a day, to pray together, to eat a fraternal meal together, to study problems together, to plan work together, sharing tasks according to the skills of each one and checking together on the results of their work. If it is impossible for them to meet every day, let them meet at least once a week."

"We are here to remember the past and to plan for the future. We need to examine and assess what we are doing. Young people nowadays in spiritual terms can't distinguish right from left in order to make the sign of the cross. Civitavecchia, today more than ever needs Don Bosco and his sons - the Salesians."

"I loved everyone with deep tenderness."

"I set out for Africa, determined to tell the Gospel with my life, in the footsteps of Charles de Foucould."

"I like highlighting a specific charism of this theologian pope: his ability to communicate important issues of the faith in a language accessible to all the Christian people. This specific characteristic makes the most of the spiritual and cultural training of this Pontiff and is also a particular gift for all believers, who look to the Pope so they may feel steadfast and directed in their faith, and that happens when the Christian people hear words accessible to all."

"Have you ever stopped to see seagulls suspended in the wind? If all beings on earth disappeared and only the seagulls remained, and maybe the little fish for their food, perhaps you think that from the seagulls, with the passing of millions of years, the animals that inhabit the earth and also man and perhaps even the frogs, butterflies and minnows? And even if the seagulls disappeared, can you imagine that the little fish of the sea, through gradual transformations, would give rise, at the end of time, to new seagulls or in any case to some new kind of sea bird capable of hovering in the air?"

"No form (including man) is [...] a form derived or improved with respect to some "primitive" progenitor. Man does not derive from primates (in the same way that birds do not derive from reptiles) except in the deceptive sense in which any form can be considered derived "from" the larger group to which it belongs. […] We have given names to the pre-human forms. We called them man-apes, subhumans, or brutes. But did they ever exist, or rather don't they belong to a mythology that has now disappeared?"

"Exhilarated by his 'discovery', Darwin jotted down these sentences: 'Origin of man now proven. Metaphysics must flourish. Anyone who understood the baboon would do more for metaphysics than Locke did." Darwinian metaphysics placed all wickedness, all cruelty, all evil at its origins, in the bestial. Carrying this thought to extreme consequences which are certainly not Christian, Darwin placed the Devil at the origin, he made man a redeemed demon. "The origin of our kind," he wrote, "is the cause of our evil passions! The Devil in the form of a Baboon is our grandfather." This doctrine was cultivated and developed by Darwin's cousin, the great statistician Francis Galton. [...] «The sense of original sin» he wrote in 1865 «would not demonstrate, according to my theory, that man has fallen from a superior condition, but rather that he is rapidly recovering from an inferior one»."

"…With the permission of Father General I left Rome in 1603 and after two years spent travelling I arrived in Goa. Soon after I came to Cochin, and thence to Madura. There I remarked that all the efforts made to bring the heathens to Christ had all been in vain. I left no stone unturned to find a way to bring them from their superstition and the worship of idols to the faith of Christ. But my efforts were fruitless, because with a sort of barbarous stolidity they turned away from the manners and customs of the Portuguese and refused to put aside the badges of their ancient nobility. When I noticed that certain Brahmins were highly praised because they led lives of great hardship and austerity and were looked upon as if they had dropped from the sky, I thought that, if to win popularity among the pagans, and raise themselves in their esteem, they contrived to keep perpetual chastity and weaken their bodies by watching, fasting and meditation, I could, to win them to Christ, conform myself to their mode of life in all such things which were not repugnant to the holiness of the Christian doctrine, for it seemed to me that with divine help I could do for God’s sake, what they did with wicked cunning to win vain applause and worldly honours. Therefore I professed to be an Italian Brahmin who had renounced the world, had studied wisdom at Rome (for a Brahmin means a wise man) and rejected all the pleasures and comforts of the world. I had already learned Tamil and Sanskrit, which among them holds the same place as the Latin among us…"

"This manuscript undoubtedly belongs to the time when the ancient religion of the gymnosophists had begun to be corrupted; except for our own sacred books, it is the most respectable monument of belief in a single God. It is called Ezour Veidam: as if one were to say the true Veidam, the Veidam explained, the pure Veidam."

"One ought to guard oneself against including among the canonical books of the Indians the Ezour Vedam , of which there is a socalled translation in the Royal Library, and which has been published in 1778. It is definitely not one of four Vedams, not withstanding its name. It is a book of controversy, written by a missionary at Masulipatam. It contains a refutation of a number of Pouranons devoted to Vichenou, which are several centuries later than the Vedams. One sees that the author tries to reduce everything to the Christian religion; he did introduce a few errors, though, so that one would not be able to recognize the missionary under the disguise of the Brahmin. Anyhow, Mr Voltaire and a few others were wrong when they gave this book an importance which it does not deserve, and when they regard it as canonical. 62"

"The very idea that he came, as he said, to preach a new or a fifth Veda, which had been lost, shows how well he knew the strong and weak points of the theological system he came to conquer."

"I had the privilege of knowing the late Bishop Mazzolari personally, particularly during the days of the liberation struggle. He dedicated his life to serving the Catholic Church in the Sudan, and he will be remembered for his heroic commitment to the struggle of the people of southern Sudan for freedom, equality, justice, and human dignity."

"We want to propose a Christianity, a Christian life, which is not closed in on itself or self-referential but is open to society, to the Kingdom of God."

"They know what they want to achieve and they're willing to pay the cost to achieve it. I believe we have to walk alongside with them, I think we have to help them to continue to walk when it will become difficult, and I don't believe it is the time historically to continually postpone."

"Our service does not have, or should not have, any other aim if not that of a humble service of the Gospel in favor of humanity . In this period, in which being a Christian is equivalent in many countries to being discriminated and persecuted, the presence of all the Churches in this Assembly is an event of intense communion and revival of love for evangelization. The Word of God runs through the continents and cannot be stopped by man. But for this to happen, it needs arms, hearts, messengers to proclaim it."

"We are living difficult and painful moments. Libya is a bit of an enigma, it is not always possible to understand how things are but I trust that Libyans will be able to find peace."

"I am amazed at how the population is able to quickly go from a situation of war to one of peace. I think it is because people yearn for peace, they need it after all these years of uncertainty. This is why I say: pray for us, because the only force is that of prayer that moves the hearts of people."

"Migrants expect orientation from the Church and a response to the great questions about Christian faith, human comfort and support capable of restoring hope and meaning to their lives. The missionary journey which we intend to undertake in this third millennium should be based on evangelization and the testimony of charity. Do not forget that Christian charity has a great evangelizing force in the measure in which it leaves the sign of God's love among men."

"People for whom it has become a habit — and, unfortunately, they are increasingly numerous in the context of our consumerist pseudo-civilization — to spend Sunday afternoon in these shopping centers, now find the opportune possibility of being able to enjoy the wealth of spiritual values. Our task is to go beyond the boundaries of ordinary pastoral care."

"If the Church helps people, it means there is need. This would mean that the revolution has not succeeded in satisfying the people's needs."

"If the Church still has a glimmer of rationality, it must elect Pope Peter Parolin. It is the only way to restore its authority."

"The Arab Spring was a complex phenomenon which, unfortunately, did not achieve the goals of greater democracy and social justice that seemed to be its driving forces. However, it is legitimate to ask how much the pursuit of particular economic and geopolitical interests contributed to this failure at the international community level."

"If military spending were used for other purposes, a fund could be set up to help millions of people who are dying for peace."

"There are many martyrs in Latin America because, starting from their choice to follow Jesus Christ, priests are willing to get their hands dirty and expose themselves in defence of the faithful entrusted to them and for the great values of justice and solidarity."