Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

The Jesus of the Gospels is surely not convenient for us.

Selfishness and fear are at the root of (pro-abortion) legislation...We in the Church have a great struggle to defend life...life is a gift not a threat.

Mission is a workshop where there is room for all.

Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium. – Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen.

Too often [the Church] is weighted down and burdened with the sins and failings of her children; too often she appears disfigured and discouraged.

The Church's mission is not political in nature. Her task is to open the world to the religious sense by proclaiming Christ.

[Evangelization] is not something optional, but the very vocation of the People of God, a duty that corresponds to it by the command of the Lord Jesus Christ himself

Since politics fundamentally should be a moral enterprise, the church in this sense has something to say about politics.

Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith

God loves us despite our shortcomings and sins, and his love gives meaning to our lives and to the life of the world.

The Catechism was not written to please you. It will not make life easy for you, because it demands of you a new life.

I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools.

May all our contemporaries stand beside their brothers and sisters in humanity. Each one of you is called by Christ and must be a missionary of the Good News in word and in active charity.

As I passed alongside it, I prayed for a future in which the peoples of the Holy Land can live together in peace and harmony without the need for such instruments of security and separation

I urge you to continue your fraternal cooperation with one another in the spirit of the community of Christ's disciples, united in your love for him and in the Gospel that you proclaim.

The one and only Gospel waits to be proclaimed by everyone together, in love and reciprocal esteem.

In the pierced heart of the Crucified, God's own heart is opened up - here we see who God is and what he is like. Heaven is no longer locked up. God has stepped out of his hiddenness.

I leave from where the apostle arrived.

Sometimes we are looked upon as people who speak only of prohibitions. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Discovering the beauty and joy of faith is a path that every new generation must take on its own.

The Jesus who makes everything okay for everyone is a phantom, a dream, not a real figure.

Continue to witness to the Gospel every day and commit yourselves generously in the next missionary initiatives in the Diocese of Rome.

Joy is the true gift of Christmas.

The destruction of images, the first signs of which reach back to the 1920s, eliminated a lot of kitsch and unworthy art, but ultimately it left behind a void.

Humor is in fact an essential element in the mirth of creation. We can see how, in many matters in our lives, God wants to prod us into taking things a bit more lightly.

Eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality.

An authentic updating of sacred music can take place only in the lineage of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and of sacred polyphony.

Liberty isn't liberalism, arbitrariness, but it's connected; it's conditioned by the great values of love and solidarity and in general by the good.

Enough with the slaughters. Enough with the violence. Enough with the hatred in Iraq!

Deeply saddened by the news of the terrorist attacks in central London, the Holy Father offers his fervent prayers for the victims and for all those who mourn.

Believers are increasingly aware that, unless the Good News is made known also in the digital world, it may be absent in the experience of many people for whom this existential space is important.

Men and women were created for something great, for infinity. Nothing else will ever be enough.

Dear young people, the Church depends on you! She needs your lively faith, your creative charity and the energy of your hope. Your presence renews, rejuvenates and gives new energy to the Church.

Purity of heart is what enables us to see.

No law made by man can overturn that of the Creator without dramatically affecting society in its very foundation.

It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives.

Forgiveness is not substitute for justice.

Our first experience of God is so important, we either experience Him as the police guard that wants to punish or as Creative Love that awaits.

Jesus resolved the false opposition between obedience and freedom and opened the path to freedom

The Eucharistic sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ embraces in turn the mystery of our Lord's continuing passion in the members of his mystical body, the church in every age.

We cannot live, we cannot look at the truth about ourselves without letting ourselves be looked at and generated by Christ in daily Eucharistic Adoration.

It is rational to believe, as it is our very existence that is at stake.

Rock music is a vehicle of anti-religion

Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.

The Church needs your faith, your idealism and your generosity, so that she can always be young in the Spirit.

Music has no borders, no race or color, no limits of country, no ethnicity. Music makes the people come together. Dance it,Dance all.

How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him. How much pride, how much self-sufficiency.

Violence against even one human being is violence against all.

Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd.

The horizon of love is truly boundless: it is the whole world!