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.

The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness. It is a question about the origin of all that is, in whose light we can glimpse the goal and thus the meaning of our common path.

Today, we need a Church capable of walking at people's side, of doing more than simply listening to them.... At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people.... We cannot keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our communities, when so many people are waiting for the Gospel.

Like Mary, may we nurture the light born within us at Christmas. May we carry it everywhere in our daily lives.

The security of faith does not make us motionless or close us off, but sends us forth to bear witness and to dialogue with all people.

The two key words for the European Union are creativity and fruitfulness. That's the challenge.

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.