This visit is meant to express my closeness to our brothers and sisters who endured the suffering, loss and devastation caused by Typhoon Yolanda. Together with many people throughout the world, I have admired the heroic strength, faith and resilience demonstrated by so many Filipinos in the face of this natural disaster, and so many others.

To celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation means to be wrapped in a warm embrace.

Let us leave a spare place at our table: a place for those who lack the basics, who are alone.

It is necessary to broaden the opportunities for a stronger presence of women in the church.

Without mercy, we have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a world of 'wounded' persons in need of understanding, forgiveness, love.

You have a specific and important mission, that of keeping alive the relationship between the faith and the cultures of the peoples to whom you belong. . . . [W]e have to follow Christ along the concrete path of our daily lives so that he can transform us.

We see that there are two worms that eat the fabric of the Church, weakening Her. Rivalry and vainglory go against this harmony, this agreement.