Where there is truth, there is also light, but don't confuse light with the flash.

Not so much anymore but some years ago in my homeland there was a habit, something called 'casamiento de apuro,' a marriage in haste because the baby is coming and to cover socially the honor of the family. There, they weren't free and it happened many times this marriage is null. As a bishop I forbade my priests to do this.

God always forgives, always. But he asks that I forgive. If I don't forgive, in a certain sense I am closing the door to God's forgiveness.

The root of this possibility of doing good - that we all have - is in creation.

We cannot become starched Christians, too polite, who speak of theology calmly over tea. We have to become courageous Christians and seek out those (who need help most).

To the criminals and all their accomplices, I, today, humbly and as a brother, repeat: convert yourselves to love and justice. It is possible to return to honesty. The tears of the mothers of Naples are asking this of you.

Sometimes we are tempted to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length. Yet Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He hopes that we will stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune and instead enter into the reality of other people’s lives and know the power of tenderness. Whenever we do so, our lives become wonderfully complicated and we experience intensely what it is to be a people, to be part of a people.