For more than 160 years, through the initiative of the French bishop Charles de Forbin Janson, the childhood of Jesus has become the icon for the commitment of Christian children who help the Church in her task of evangelization by prayer, sacrifice and gestures of solidarity....Thousands of children meet the needs of other children, driven by the love that the Son of God, become a child, brought to the earth. I say thanks to these little ones and I pray that they will always be missionaries.

To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity.

The world needs more than just itself. Amid the dreariness, people do not need a distraction that will in the end become dreary itself; they are asking for mystery, even if they do not realize this themselves. They need the sign of the wholly Other, the living Word of God, entering into this our age in unadulterated trustworthiness and dynamism.

Mission is a duty about which one must say 'Woe to me if I do not evangelize' (1 Corinthians 9:16)...redemption and mission are acts of love [because] those who proclaim the Gospel participate in the charity of Christ.

[Non-Catholic Christians are] in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the [Roman Catholic] church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.

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

After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.