There is another important point: encountering the poor. If we step outside ourselves we find poverty. Today-it sickens the heart to say so-the discovery of a tramp who has died of the cold is not news. Today what counts as news is, maybe, a scandal. A scandal: ah, that is news! Today, the thought that a great many children do not have food to eat is not news. This is serious, this is serious! We cannot put up with this! Yet that is how things are. We cannot become starched Christians, those over-educated Christians who speak of theological matters as they calmly sip their tea.

I distrust a charity that costs nothing and does not hurt.

All Christians need an 'ecological conversion', whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them.

Solidarity...is a structural value of the social doctrine, as Blessed John Paul II reminded us.

REJECT ALL FORMS OF CORRUPTION THAT DIVERT RESOURCES FROM THE POOR

What God cares about most is that we are His friends.

True charity requires courage: Let us overcome the fear of getting our hands dirty so as to help those in need.