Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and share your testimony, go out and interact with your brothers, go out and share, go out and ask. Become the Word in body as well as spirit.

I would like especially to mention you, the women, wives and mothers of Paraguay, who at great cost and sacrifice were able to lift up a country defeated, devastated and laid low by an abominable war. God bless your perseverance, God bless and encourage your faith, God bless the women of Paraguay, the most glorious women of America.

The Church is called to draw near to every person, beginning with the poorest and those who suffer.

We all need to improve, to change for the better. Lent helps us fight against our faults.

Let's pray for whole world that there be brotherhood. I hope this journey of the church we begin today is fruitful for evangelization.

When Jesus stepped into the waters of the Jordan and was baptized by John the Baptist, he did so not because he was in need of repentance, or conversion: he did it to be among people who need forgiveness, among us sinners, and to take upon himself the burden of our sins.

There is another form of poverty! It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously.