"How can you see Christ in people?" And we only say: It is an act of faith, constantly repeated. It is an act of love, resulting from an act of faith. It is an act of hope, that we can awaken these same acts in their hearts, too, with the help of God.

What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships?

Poverty is a strange and elusive thing. ... I condemn poverty and I advocate it; poverty is simple and complex at once; it is a social phenomenon and a personal matter. Poverty is an elusive thing, and a paradoxical one. We need always to be thinking and writing about it, for if we are not among its victims its reality fades from us. We must talk about poverty because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.

Man is not meant to live alone.

We cannot build up the idea of the apostolate of the laity without the foundation of the liturgy.

We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.

As a child, I came across the Bible, but nobody in my family had anything to do with religion. I just felt a profound truth there that appealed to me.