Cardinals

"It is not easy to link together the individual and society, or the believer and the community. Nothing is easy, in effect. I therefore believe that the "newness" to be sought for today's evangelization should be proposed as a rediscovery of living Christ in the co-existence of specific communities. These, in turn, should integrate interpersonal links, indispensable nowadays: inter-communitarian communities, fixed but interconnected points."

"The great Christian community can only be achieved by starting from small groups constructed by personal faith and mutual love, in order to reach all of society, since mankind, linked to God privately and publicly in the social, cultural, political sphere etc., can come together in an orderly sovereignty integrating history, religion, culture and many institutions."

"As a young Bishop in the 1950's I formed Social Guilds to prepare for independence. Now in the democratic process we should help form leaders. We should have forums of African Catholic professionals. Let us involve the lay leaders in our Church government structures. We thank our friends who have helped us so far to train our people, kindly continue to do so. The greatest investment for Africa is in its people. Their education will determine the future of Africa and the world at large."

"I didn't miss much because I was having wonderful new experiences. I didn’t get home much because we went by boat back then. I found that I could fit in very well wherever I was."

"You lay people, are the great majority of the Church and it is time to be protagonists, develop a sense of belonging and deepen formation, committed according to our faith, to be leaven in the mass, salt of the earth and light for transformation of society."

"If the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church is seen simply as the laying down of laws, and not as the logical and often inevitable consequence of our faith, those who find themselves in these difficult pastoral situations will naturally see the Church as uncaring."

"I think each one of us, wherever we are, we are called to serve, and that is what will make us great, not the title."

"Dialogue of action, if it is to be truly effective, must be nourished by every other form of dialogue - dialogue of theological discourse, dialogue of religious experience, dialogue of life. Only then will religion touch deeply the lives of people, answer their deepest needs and thus fulfill its own true function."

"Joint commissions would foster the ecclesial communion which sustains our episcopal collegiality and become suitable forums in which we address together problems that seem almost intractable when we try to address them in isolation from one another."

"The Peoples of Asia, in their vast majority, have a deep religious experience, which we must learn to know and appreciate. The evangelization of Asia is, first of all, a dialogue of life with all believers whose experience already brings them closer to God, Who is the Origin of all things. Our deepest conviction is that the Gospel can contribute something profound and vital, to the men and women of Asia."

"The new evangelization called for five hundred years after the first evangelization of America requires a new catechesis as its "engine", in order to provide the lay faithful with the comprehensive understanding of their faith to allow them to embrace Christ's mission of transforming the world with confidence."

"God is good and perfect, but I know I'm not, and it's useless trying."

"I remain convinced that gathering a small council around the pope every so often, Church figures from different countries, whose members might change every two or three years maybe, would be of help to him, so he can be sure of knowing the temperature of the Church. The Curia can't feel and register that temperature, it's not its task."

"Lamps (inculturation) are the people from all epochs who give them to us day after day. Let us also be grateful for our period: everything is not so negative."

"The idea that Christianity has been achieved in Europe is widespread, sometimes leading to programmes separating the Church, Christianity and contemporary culture. The result is a sort of "unconcerned apostasy" of most Europeans, at least in Western Europe, and especially among adolescents and young people"

"The communication of faith is the principal duty of every Bishop. To proclaim Jesus as Saviour and to guide the work of the proclamation from the frontline is our most important task. Like the apostles who assumed the task of proclaiming the Good News, and even gave their lives for this cause, the Bishops, as their successors, should also be prepared to give their lives if necessary."

"Every individual Church or which is called the sui iuris Church exists for proclaiming the Gospel, through her unique and rich heritage or patrimony of liturgy, theology, spirituality and discipline. Moreover, evangelization and pastoral care are two integral dimensions of one and the same mission - preaching the Gospel to the whole world. Without pastoral care, those evangelized cannot be formed into a community of believers and cannot be nourished in their faith through the ministry of the Word and the Sacraments."

"The State can ensure quality education at a lower cost than the direct management of schools and the Church enjoys a fundamental tool to evangelization and human promotion."

"The person does not realize himself in himself. He finds himself only by overcoming himself and is self-realized outside himself, that is going towards God and men. He can achieve happiness only indirectly through this double transcendence. In this sense, there is no need to condemn the entire process of individualism; it must be oriented towards the correctly understood Christian faith and the human personality."

"There's always the tendency to transform the Church into an ethical agency, and of measuring the Church by the yardstick of social and cultural utility. The mission proper to the Church is that of proclaiming the Gospel. But when one identifies the Church with a cultural and political bloc, there is the danger of making difficult the Church's contact with all those outside the bloc."

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

"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."

"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."

"The Lord wants us to be in the world, not of the world. The Christian style of life is not easy but the Lord helps us."

"I ask God that the Pope's words and deeds may find an echo in many generous young people and encourage them to follow Christ and to cooperate with him in the work of the Church in today’s world. Young people seek to give meaning to life, seek an authentic message and find in the Pope a reference point in which they find contents that fill them with meaning and lead them to the source, which is Jesus Christ."

"As a tireless artisan of communion, he collaborated actively in the universal pastoral concern of the Successor of Peter. Let us remember our dear and venerable Brother as a witness of the love that comes from God and constitutes the foundation of the Church's unity"

"It cannot be said that the Curia is very static."

"I try to teach serenity and inner peace. It is important not to hate, not to hold grudges. Forgiveness breeds forgiveness and that is the only remedy, even in a situation where the air is polluted with hatred, as is the case in our Argentina. There are many divisions in society, but also in the Church, and we need to change. Conversion has only one name: the person of Jesus. The relationship with Jesus is what is fundamental, more than "religion", more than the content of catechesis."

"Those who have a service to their country have a high vocation."

"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."

"God could cause a dead person to resurrect without possessing a single atom of the matter of which his earthly body was made."

"Peace never occurs in isolation. It is the fruition of a good life for all. For that reason, working for peace is considered to be a highly esteemed spiritual value. Peace is the greatest blessing of God to a people. Working for peace should be a central concern of the Church."

"The celebration of the Mass is not something to be a matter of personal choice. We celebrate as a community, as the entire Church and the Church throughout the centuries, has always regulated the form of liturgy that it has come to believe is more pertinent for a particular age."

"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."

"It is not difficult to imagine the joy that awaits John Paul II to see an invalid ascend to Bernini's glory."

"The word "sign" is a word tied to the sacramental nature of the Church: to say that the Church is, in all its being, in all its historical reality, a sign for the world, this has not yet been developed as far as it could be. In the same way, saying that the Church has the obligation to read the signs of the times, to be open to the history of humanity interpreting with wisdom all that human reality is, and discerning in it what can be a sign of the Kingdom of God."

"He left his office as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments "on tiptoe", to devote himself to the service which on the contrary one must never give up: prayer. And now that the Heavenly Father has desired to have the Cardinal beside him, I am certain that in Heaven - where we trust the Lord has welcomed him in his fatherly embrace - he continues to pray for us."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"(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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."