Quotes from Pope Benedict XVI

For me, it's a great joy to be together with priests: in the end, the bishop of Rome is the bishop and brother of all priests. His mandate is to confirm the brothers in the faith.

God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf.

God in fact does not change: he is faithful to himself.

Society as a whole must defend the conceived child's right to life and the true good of the woman who can never, in any circumstances, find fulfilment in the decision to abort.

Advent is the spiritual season of hope par excellence, and in this season the whole Church is called to be hope, for itself and for the world.

One who has hope lives differently.

We have to pay attention to developing well, in the correct manner, the human aspects also in the professions, in respect of other persons, in being concerned for others, which is the best way of being concerned for ourselves.

I realized that everything I had to do I could not do on my own, and so I was almost obliged to put myself in God's hands, to trust in Jesus who - while I wrote my book on him - I felt bound to by an old and more profound friendship.

I no longer wield the power of the office for the government of the church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, within St. Peter's bounds. St. Benedict, whose name I bear as pope, shall be a great example in this for me. He showed us the way to a life which, active or passive, belongs wholly to the work of God.

Interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the term is not possible without putting one's own faith into parentheses.

Down through the centuries, the Czech Republic, the territory of the Czech Republic has been a place of cultural exchange.

Prayer, as a means of drawing ever new strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed.

The Church is not self-made, it was created by God and is continuously formed by Him. This finds expression in the Sacraments, above all in that of Baptism: I enter into the Church not by a bureaucratic act, but with the help of this Sacrament.

We all see that, today, man can destroy the foundation of his existence: his Earth.

Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.

Thus, the apostles' adventure began as a gathering of persons who open to one another reciprocally. A direct knowledge of the Teacher began for the disciples.

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

A form of reason that in some way wished to strip itself of beauty would be diminished; it would be a blinded reason.

Where human lives are concerned, time is always short, yet the world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed 'too big to fail.'

The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah was a crime against God and against humanity.

It is essential that God created men and women to be one, as it is said in the first chapters of the Bible. So I think even if our culture is against marriage as essential form of relations between human beings, between women and men. I think our nature is always present, and we can understand it if we will understand it.

I don't know if the term 'liberation theology,' which can be interpreted in a very positive sense, will help us much. What's important is the common rationality to which the church offers a fundamental contribution, and which must always help in the education of conscience, both for public and for private life.

It's a great responsibility before God, the judge who guides us, who draws us to truth and good, and in this sense the church must unmask evil, rendering present the goodness of God, rendering present his truth, the truly infinite for which we are thirsty.

We need Grace and forgiveness.