Quotes from Pope Benedict XVI

The essence of Christianity...is an ever-new encounter with... the God who speaks to us, who approaches us and who befriends us!

If only everyone could experience the joy of being Christian, being loved by God Who gave His Son for us!

Let us seek in particular to communicate the deepest joy, that of knowing God in Christ.

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.

Art means: revealing God in everything that exists.

Let us allow ourselves to be 'infected' by St. Joseph's silence! We need it greatly, in a world that is often too noisy, that does not favor meditation or listening to the voice of God.

The fundamental task of the evangelization of culture is the challenge to make God visible in the human face of Jesus.

We were looking for a 'good shepherd,' and instead we got a German shepherd.

A good school provides a rounded education for the whole person. And a good Catholic school, over and above this, should help all its students to become saints.

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.

God came into the world to reawaken the thirst for great things in us.

Anyone who has discovered Christ must lead others to him. A great joy cannot be kept to oneself. It has to be passed on.

All the great works of art, the cathedrals - the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches - are a luminous sign of God, and thus are truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.

The happiness you have a right to enjoy has a name and a face: it is Jesus of Nazareth, hidden in the Eucharist.

It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.

The environment is God's gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations, and towards humanity as a whole.

Poverty is a plague against which humanity must fight without cease.

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.

An important function of theology is to keep religion tied to reason and reason to religion. Both roles are of essential importance for humanity.

God seeks us where we are, not so that we stay there, but so that we may come to be where He is, so that we may get beyond ourselves.

I would say it simply: No one can give that which he doesn't personally possess, which means we cannot transmit the Holy Spirit in an effective way, render the Spirit perceptible, if we ourselves aren't close to the Spirit.

At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God's creatures.

A weak point of mine was maybe little resolve in governing and making decisions.

The Lord has placed next to me many people, who, with generosity and love for God and the church, have helped me and been close to me.