Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war.

I don't cling to earthly life because I believe in eternal life. That's the big distinction between my point of view and a purely secular position.

Even apart from the image of a truly merciless God that contradicts everything we can assume from what Jesus says about the Either of the lost, can we be surprised at a time when retributive punishments without an opportunity of probation are being increasingly abandoned in education and penal justice, that the idea not only of a lifelong, but even eternal punishment of body and soul, seems to many people absolutely monstrous.

After two world wars, the collapse of fascism, nazism, communism and colonialism and the end of the cold war, humanity has entered a new phase of its history.

We should think about whether canonizations, which are an invention of the Middle Ages, still make sense today.

That is the Roman way: to give favors to the favorites.

For many people, the pope is still, to a certain extent, a positive role model and a moral force, although others feel that this aspect has suffered greatly.