We need to 'go out,' then, in order to experience our own anointing, its power and its redemptive efficacy: to the 'outskirts' where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters.

You may be poor yourselves in material ways, but you have an abundance of gifts to offer when you offer Christ and the community of his Church.

In this case [the Charlemagne Prize], I don't say (I was) forced, but convinced by the holy and theological headstrongness of Cardinal [Walter] Kasper, because he was chosen, elected by Aachen to convince me. And I said yes, but in the Vatican. And I said I offer it for Europe, as a co-decoration for Europe, a prize so that Europe may do what I desired at Strasburg; that it may no longer be "grandmother Europe" but "mother Europe."

This concern for the poor is in the Gospel, it is within the tradition of the Church, it is not an invention of communism and it must not be turned into an ideology, as has sometimes happened before in the course of history.

Let us learn to live with kindness, to love everyone, even when they do not love us.

These two criteria are like the pillars of true love: deeds, and the gift of self.

We ask for peace and freedom for the many men and women subject to old and new forms of enslavement on the part of criminal individuals and groups.