Dear friends, may no adversity paralyze you. Be afraid neither of the world, nor of the future, nor of your weakness. The Lord has allowed you to live in this moment of history so that, by your faith, his name will continue to resound throughout the world.

In the face of horror ... there is no other answer than the cross of Christ: Love that descends to the abyss of evil.

The ways of the Lord are not easy, but we were not created for an easy life, but for great things, for goodness.

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs. ... The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in work, in action and in law.

The Church's mission is not political in nature. Her task is to open the world to the religious sense by proclaiming Christ.

While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

A spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair.