I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I'm here.

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.

He who doesn't pray to the Lord prays to the devil.

Today too, amid so much darkness, we need to see the light of hope and to be men and women who bring hope to others.

Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal 'security,' those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists - they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.

Be men and women with others and for others: true champions at the service of others.

Our efforts must aim at restoring hope, righting wrongs, maintaining commitments, and thus promoting the well-being of individuals and of peoples.