I had a long conversation with the imam, the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar University, and I know how they think... They seek peace, encounter.

Let us never yield to pessimism, to that bitterness that the devil offers us every day.

I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess.

To the criminals and all their accomplices, I, today, humbly and as a brother, repeat: convert yourselves to love and justice. It is possible to return to honesty. The tears of the mothers of Naples are asking this of you.

Fasting makes sense if it really chips away at our security and, as a consequence, benefits someone else, if it helps us cultivate the style of the good Samaritan, who bent down to his brother in need and took care of him.

There is no cross, big or small, in our life which the Lord does not share with us.

May the World Day of Consecrated Life be a timely occasion to rediscover the centrality of Jesus in our lives.