But please know, Jesus never lets you down. Please know that the love and tenderness of Mother Mary never lets you down. And holding on to her mantle and with the power that comes from Jesus love on the cross, let us move forward, always forward, and walk together as brothers and sisters in the Lord forward.

It is necessary to broaden the opportunities for a stronger presence of women in the church.

Be dispensers of God's grace, not controllers. Don't be the Holy Spirit's customs agents.

Men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the 'culture of waste.' If a computer breaks it is a tragedy, but poverty, the needs and dramas of so many people end up being considered normal. ... When the stock market drops 10 points in some cities, it constitutes a tragedy. Someone who dies is not news, but lowering income by 10 points is a tragedy! In this way people are thrown aside as if they were trash.

[Orthodox Patriarch] Kirill, my brother. We kissed each other, embraced, and then a conversation for two hours. Old age doesn't come on its own.Two hours where we spoke as brothers, sincerely and no one knows what was spoke about, only what we said at the end publicly about how we felt as we spoke.

While all too many people live in dire poverty, others are caught up in materialism and lifestyles which are destructive of family life and the most basic demands of Christian morality.

Today children are disposed of because there is no food or because they are killed before being born – children are discarded. The elderly are disposed of, well, because they are useless, they do not produce, neither children nor the elderly produce; then, with more or less sophisticated systems they are slowly abandoned and now, as in this crisis it is necessary to recover some equilibrium, we are witnessing a third very painful discarding –the discarding of young people. Millions of young people… are discarded from work, are unemployed.