Top 88 Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

The Church must actualize, be present in the public debate, in our struggle for a true concept of liberty and peace.

It is absolutely important to make accessible the Gospel for all people and also understandable for Jewish people.

All the great works of art, the cathedrals – the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches – are a luminous sign of God, and thus are truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.

Art is elemental. Reason alone as it’s expressed in the sciences can’t be man’s complete answer to reality, and it can’t express everything that man can, wants to, and has to express. I think God built this into man. Art along with science is the highest gift God has given him.

We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.

The family unit is fundamental for the educational process and for the development both of individuals and states; hence there is a need for policies which promote the family and aid social cohesion and dialogue.

The wrath of God is a way of saying that I have been living in a way that is contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins to live and grow away from God, who lives away from what is good, is turning his life toward wrath.

Human rights, of course, must include the right to religious freedom, understood as the expression of a dimension that is at once individual and communitarian – a vision that brings out the unity of the person while clearly distinguishing between the dimension of the citizen and that of the believer.

We all see that, today, man can destroy the foundation of his existence: his Earth.

When the danger is great, one must not run away.

For me, it is one of the ‘signs of the times’ that the idea of God’s mercy is becoming increasingly central and dominant.

Choose the path of dialogue rather than the path of unilateral decisions.

Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.

God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf.

Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: ‘What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?’

In the 20th century, in the darkest period of German and European history, an insane racist ideology, born of neopaganism, gave rise to the attempt, planned and systematically carried out by the regime, to exterminate European Jews. The result has passed into history as the Shoah.

Germany has an established and well-furnished Catholicism, often with employed Catholics who handle the church like a labor union. For them, the church is simply the employer.

A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.

Where human lives are concerned, time is always short, yet the world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed ‘too big to fail.’

Above all, we must have great respect for these people who also suffer and who want to find their own way of correct living. On the other hand, to create a legal form of a kind of homosexual marriage, in reality, does not help these people.

The Church is not self-made, it was created by God and is continuously formed by Him. This finds expression in the Sacraments, above all in that of Baptism: I enter into the Church not by a bureaucratic act, but with the help of this Sacrament.

Since politics fundamentally should be a moral enterprise, the church in this sense has something to say about politics.

If it is true that the great missionaries of the 16th century were convinced that one who was not baptized was lost – and that explains their missionary commitment – in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, that conviction was definitely abandoned.

The counterweight to the dominion of evil can consist in the first place only in the divine-human love of Jesus Christ that is always greater than any possible power of evil.

Liberty isn’t liberalism, arbitrariness, but it’s connected; it’s conditioned by the great values of love and solidarity and in general by the good.

The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us.

The church is not a political power; it’s not a party, but it’s a moral power.

I too hope in this short reign to be a man of peace.

We have to pay attention to developing well, in the correct manner, the human aspects also in the professions, in respect of other persons, in being concerned for others, which is the best way of being concerned for ourselves.

God guides his church, maintains her always, and especially in difficult times. Let us never lose this vision of faith, which is the only true vision of the way of the church and the world.

A form of reason that in some way wished to strip itself of beauty would be diminished; it would be a blinded reason.

This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness… than the desires of the moment.

Interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the term is not possible without putting one’s own faith into parentheses.

Mercy is what moves us toward God, while justice makes us tremble in his sight.

To me, its seems necessary to rediscover – and the energy to do so exists – that even the political and economic spheres need moral responsibility, a responsibility that is born in man’s heart and, in the end, has to do with the presence or absence of God.

Loving the church also means having the courage to make difficult, trying choices, having ever before oneself the good of the church and not one’s own.

Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made.

Our Earth is talking to us, and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive.

A weak point of mine was maybe little resolve in governing and making decisions.

We can learn from him that suffering and the gift of himself is an essential gift we need in our time.

The prevailing mentality was that the Church must not be a Church of laws but, rather, a Church of love; she must not punish. Thus, the awareness that punishment can be an act of love ceased to exist. This led to an odd darkening of the mind, even in very good people.

Down through the centuries, the Czech Republic, the territory of the Czech Republic has been a place of cultural exchange.

If a Pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.

Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution, or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.

Today, I, too, wish to reaffirm that I intend to continue on the path toward improved relations and friendship with the Jewish people, following the decisive lead given by John Paul II.

We pray that the Lord may help us to produce His light in ourselves, even in dark days, so that we might be light for others, illuminating the world and life in this world.

It is of great concern that the fabric of African life, its very source of hope and stability, is threatened by divorce, abortion, prostitution, human trafficking, and a contraception mentality.

Faith is not a product of reflection, nor is it even an attempt to penetrate the depths of my own being.

In the harshness of the world of technology – in which feelings do not count anymore – the hope for a saving love grows, a love which would be given freely and generously.

In reality, I am more a professor, one who reflects and mediates on spiritual questions. Practical governance is not my strong point, and this is certainly a weakness. But I do not see myself as a failure. For eight years, I carried out my work.

For me, it’s a great joy to be together with priests: in the end, the bishop of Rome is the bishop and brother of all priests. His mandate is to confirm the brothers in the faith.

God in fact does not change: he is faithful to himself.

The reality of the Eucharistic sacrifice has always been at the heart of Catholic faith; called into question in the 16th century, it was solemnly reaffirmed at the Council of Trent against the backdrop of our justification in Christ.