franciscans

"The faithful are all foreigners: Filipinos and a large number of Africans, many of whom are in search of work and in need of material assistance. In Benghazi life is almost normal. Every now and then explosions in the distance can be heard, but otherwise people lead their lives as always. People go to work and shops are open. Generally the situation is calm, although not always do we know what happens."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"God chose me and every baptized Christian to be a missionary, to be always ready to serve His people with humility, doing our best, listening and praying. My mission is to meet, to visit the people of God , sharing the word of God and announcing the Gospel."

"He is a figure who never stays silent and always tries to make breakthroughs in his work."

"Parents should instill positive and important values into their children's minds so that families can be evangelizers. This is how Catholic families can be truly involved in spreading the spirit of Christianity."

"Leaders of nations must do everything to stop the conflict: they are destroying a whole country, and anyone who will prevail in the end will be faced only a pile of human and material rubble."

"The Church is evolving. The face of the Church is no longer European or American, but also African and Asian. It is very interesting to see the universality of the Church. This is one of the most impressive parts of this encounter, I think."

"As for the inter-religious relationships, especially between Muslims and Christians, I am not worried. In fact, I am very confident."

"It's not about doing new things but about being genuinely faithful to what the essence of the Christian faithful is. Some think that the renewal will bring about new things or something like that. Instead, the renewal will help us to cleanse ourselves a bit, so that the face of Jesus Christ will shine in our face, because this is what it means to be a Christian."

"The Christian must be a universal brother, open to all without distinctions, preserving his own identity, but establishing bridges of respect, friendship, solidarity with the whole world. This is another way of evangelizing, perhaps more costly and more exacting than that by word. We are called to live evangelical values like love, justice, forgiveness, solidarity with everyone, especially with the poorest."

"Look at the 12 apostles. Jesus chose a man who was the tax collector for the Roman empire and also one who was an enemy of Caesar. But Jesus is bigger than politics, and the same happens here."

"We must not allow violence among brothers, and we must seek justice through the institutions that apply the law. The solution will never come with violence."

"Our method of evangelising is in fact to promote respect for the dignity of every person"

"For our part, we hope to restore peace and reconciliation through dialogue and reaffirm the need for Christians to respect all other believers."

"We are called to be witnesses to Jesus; if we are witnesses we are missionaries. To be witnesses we must learn to live with Christ who is always with us."

"Celebrating the Eucharist means celebrating who we are, always living our priestly identity, our ministry or service of making the Lord's Supper present. What greatness we possess! And what a responsibility! Are we astounded by this self-giving and this responsibility before Christ and the Church? At least we should be."

"Reciprocal knowledge helps to eliminate prejudice and build peace. Being a Franciscan in this context means being authentic brothers to people of different opinion, religion, or race. Living fraternity can also help Indonesia as a country: a reality dispersed over its 13,000 islands."

"We should never give up whatever happens because there is someone real stronger than every political power, and that is the strength of the risen Lord,"

"Although we may be different in our look, ethnicity, culture, and clothing we are all the same and want the same – faith, hope and love. Our beliefs bind us so closely, that even though we come from various backgrounds we are able to live with each other in peace and harmony."

"This small, but great church has given the world church countless martyrs. These were people who had a great loyalty to Christ and the church. Catholicism continued on in Albania. This is thanks to the martyr church."

"Feeling sad, helpless and sometimes even furious is not unusual. However, we must prevent sadness developing into hopelessness, prevent anger turning into hatred."

"Dialogue is not the crucial game changing focus anymore. Instead, reconciliation should be the key. The conflict between the protesters and the police, the dissatisfaction towards the performance of the government must be addressed. It is apparent that we must try out best to heal the soul and body of our younger generation. Please do not ask me how to heal the young souls. I really do not know how can that be done without the intervention from the Holy Spirit."

"Go to Church to thank the Lord for another year. The people should understand the difference between what is necessary and what only satisfies a whim."

"Francis will go down in history as the Pope of reform. He has done a great deal to reform the Church, and this must continue, and I believe it will continue, for the simple reason that before leaving office he concluded the cycle of the Synod on synodality. And what has been produced by this Synod has become a heritage for the whole Church. Interviewer: You mentioned synodality. In mid-March, Francis approved the start of a synodal journey that should lead to an ecclesial assembly in 2028. Can we say that this synodal journey remains unfinished? Cardinal Ambongo: I wouldn't say unfinished. The Pope always repeated: "I pray to the Lord that he will grant me enough time so that the reforms that have begun can reach the point of no return." I believe that the reform initiatives undertaken by Francis have now reached that point. That is why I am convinced that the reforms will continue."

"We have the impression, at least from the outside, that the West is losing its roots, and the roots of the West are precisely the values that the West brought us during colonisation, and we believed in these values; but today we see that these values no longer exist for the West, and this confuses us a little. We ask ourselves: where is the West going with this kind of approach? And when I say that the West is in danger of disappearing, it is because a people is also its culture, but we have the impression that the West is no longer willing to embrace its culture: everything is relativised, everything is questioned, and this, in any case, disturbs us."

"(About the Synod on Synodality) So, coming to this Synod, the intention was not to address this or that problem. The main intention, the primary objective of the Synod, is about how we can become a new Church together, acquire a new way of being the Church; in our way of being, in our operating structures, in our collaboration structures."

"The Pope himself considered his trip to Congo one of his most important apostolic visits."

"It has always been important for the Capuchins to encourage lay people to take an active part in the Church and in effect we have many local lay Catholics in the Franciscan Tertiary Order. This is very encouraging for us because the collaboration of well-prepared lay people is necessary for the apostolate."

"To play God today is to be the owner of human life, to control that life in all of his stages and all of its forms. A control that decides who must be eliminated and when."

"Notwithstanding its errors and sins, Christian history succeeded in tracing paths of freedom, dignity, goodness and truth."

"To simplify, we have before us a central power, which is trying to resurface and assert itself, which is facing federal states which, in turn, are trying to make their voice heard. In fact, this confrontation has immobilized the country. The Somali political situation is influenced by the interests of regional and international actors. The price of this situation is the instability paid by the civilian population."

"I expect greater involvement of the Somali diaspora, while better coordination and a unified approach of the international community would be desirable."

"Jesus Christ founded one Catholic Church with fundamental truths and sacraments. He did not detail the way that should be experienced. History and geography have provided the alternate expressions. With a unified Catholic Church, our differences can be ways of understanding those truths and celebrating the sacraments while protecting their integrity."

"During the festival we appreciate how big is God's gift to Asmat people. They can preserve their identity through their woodcarvings. Their carving is art that reflects fundamental beliefs passed down from generation to generation."

"We ask for prayers and support for our seminarians so that they can recover soon, and for the medical workers looking after them."

"I wanted to encourage local people to love the environment and the best way to do so was to lead by example. I tried hard."

"Education is an essential tool to overcome religious, tribal and political barriers, as well as being an essential element for human development."

"We must move forward. These are extremists, not everyone is like that. We try to educate our people to differentiate between the terrorists and those Muslims who are not terrorists. For their part, the Muslims try to tell their people that Christians are their brothers, although there are differences. We must live together as brothers and sisters."

"If we follow Jesus' thinking, spirit and deeds in our life. We can defeat the spreading of hatred, if we stop it in ourselves and instead recall the teaching of Jesus about the love to enemies. The peace, for which we have been praying for months so eagerly, first of all has to be born in ourselves. Then it can spread in the society – maybe not today, not nowadays, but in the future. The hatred kept in human heart leads to war."

"Nicaea is not only a place for theological reflection: This Council was also the fruit of the profound witness of faith by so many people who gave their lives for the faith in the first three centuries of Christianity. This witness, in a sense, prepared the outcome of the Council. For us today, the memory of this witness of faith is the most important thing, because it inspires and strengthens us in the challenges we live in the present"

"Our communities must face daily not a few difficulties of an economic order; above all, however, they must be able to react to an inferiority complex in the face of an oppressive Muslim majority, which makes them feel oppressed and can make them think that they are the "infidels.""

"One must always infuse comfort and hope."

"[Edvige] lived an ordinary life, from the outside the same as that of so many laypeople, but extraordinary in terms of her intimacy with God, her union with Him, to the point of identifying with Jesus in a perfect and transforming union with Him, the spouse of souls. Friend of the poor and the marginalized, she had words of consolation for everyone … If we ask what are the strong points of the Christian life of this sister of ours, and which lead her to be an example of welcoming prayerfulness and humble and joyful abnegation, we would say that there are essentially two: constant contemplation of the Crucified Lord and the adoration of the Eucharist."

"[Holy Cross,] you resolve every bitterness."

"When someone is moved by apostolic zeal, he always moves forward, with a very open spirit, with the desire of always doing good. The Lord then does the rest."

"The Catholic Church in Greece must play the game of the European Union, pushing for a secular, free, independent and modern state."

"We will not lose hope because we have the certainty that our destiny is not in the hands of a man or a superpower. Our destiny is in the hands of God, a Provident Father. It is in Him, and only in Him, that our salvation lies."

"I do not yet know God's plan, but I hope that his grace will accompany me to carry out the project for which God has chosen and called me."