It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love.

...The baptized in their sense of mission, through prayer, the witness of life and Christian commitment in all its forms, so that all the faithful may become missionaries in the places where they live and that vocations will come forth to proclaim the Gospel to men who do not yet know it.

Society today is being fragmented by a way of thinking that is inherently short-sighted because it disregards the full horizon of truth - the truth about God and about us. By its nature, relativism fails to see the whole picture. It ignores the very principles that enable us to live and flourish in unity, order and harmony.

From the point of view of the Christian faith, man comes in the profoundest sense to himself not through what he does but through what he accepts. He must wait for the gift of love, and love can only be received as a gift... One must wait for it, let it be given to one. And one cannot become wholly man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved... If he declines to let himself be presented with the gift, then he destroys himself.

Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd.

The new Pope knows that his task is to make the light of Christ shine before men and women of world - not his own light, but that of Christ.

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