I like to speak with the youth, and I like to hear the youth. They always put me in difficulty. They tell me things that I haven't thought of, or that I've partly thought of. The restless youth, the creative youth, I like them!

I don’t know if it is all (man’s fault) but the majority is, for the most part, it is man who continuously slaps down nature.

To protect creation, to protect every man and every woman, to look upon them with tenderness and love is to open up a horizon of hope.

We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf (cf. Ex 32:1-35) has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings; man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption.

We can study the whole history of salvation, we can study the whole of Theology, but without the Spirit we cannot understand. It is the Spirit that makes us realize the truth or - in the words of Our Lord - it is the Spirit that makes us know the voice of Jesus.

Let us remember well, however, that whenever food is thrown out it is as if it were stolen from the table of the poor, from the hungry!

The victims of problems of the family are the children. The children. Even of problems that neither husband nor wife have a say in.