For just as some people want a purely spiritual Christ, without flesh and without the cross, they also want their interpersonal relationships provided by sophisticated equipment, by screens and systems which can be turned on and off on command. Meanwhile, the Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction.

May both of them [Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II] teach us not to be scandalized by the wounds of Christ and to enter ever more deeply into the mystery of divine mercy, which always hopes and always forgives, because it always loves.

Let us never lose hope! God loves us always, even with our mistakes and sins.

I don't know how things stand in the thinking of the Italian parliament. The Pope doesn't get mixed up in Italian politics.

We don't have to expect everything from those who govern us; that would be juvenile.

Racism today is the ultimate evil in the world

Among our tasks as witnesses to the love of Christ is that of giving a voice to the cry of the poor.