110+ Pope Benedict XVI Quotes On Faith, Hope And Family

Pope Benedict XVI is a German clergyman who was elected as the 265th pope of the Catholic Church in 2005. He served as pope for nearly eight years before resigning in 2013, becoming the first pope to do so since the Middle Ages. He is now known as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Pope Benedict XVI on faith, hope, love.

Top 10 Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

1. Truth is not determined by a majority vote.
2. It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.
3. The cross reminds us that there is no true love without suffering, there is no gift of life without pain.
4. I have a mustard seed; and I am not afraid to use it.
5. When politicians presume to do God's work, they do not become divine but diabolical.
6. 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.
7. Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me - a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.
8. Dear young people, do not be satisfied with anything less than Truth and Love, do not be content with anything less than Christ
9. Evil draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think.
10. Everything is a gift from God: it is only by recognizing this crucial dependence on the Creator that we will find freedom and peace.

Pope Benedict XVI Short Quotes

• May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.
• We are no longer able to hear God - There are too many frequencies filling our ears.
• But Palm Sunday tells us that ... it is the cross that is the true tree of life.
• Freedom is not only a gift, but a summons to personal responsibility.
• What a treasure is hidden in two small words: 'thank you!'
• In Jesus Christ, God took on a human face and became our friend and brother.
• I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this earth.
• The freedom to kill is not a true freedom, but a tyranny that reduces human beings to slavery.
• Poverty is a plague against which humanity must fight without cease.
• Dancing is not a form of expression for the Christian liturgy.

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Faith

Help each other to live and to grow in the Christian faith so as to be valiant witnesses of the Lord. Be united, but not closed. Be humble, but not fearful. Be simple, but not naive. Be thoughtful, but not complicated. Enter into dialogue with others, but be yourselves. — Pope Benedict XVI

In a world where there is so much noise, so much bewilderment, there is a need for silent adoration of Jesus concealed in the Host. Be assiduous in the prayer of adoration and teach it to the faithful. It is a source of comfort and light, particularly to those who are suffering. — Pope Benedict XVI

Lent stimulates us to let the Word of God penetrate our life and in this way to know the fundamental truth: who we are, where we come from, where we must go, what path we must take in life. — Pope Benedict XVI

Believing is nothing other than, in the darkness of the world, touching the hand of God, and in this way, in silence, hearing the Word, seeing love. — Pope Benedict XVI

An Adult faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelties. — Pope Benedict XVI

All the Saints of God are there to protect me, to sustain me and to carry me. And your prayers, my dear friends, your indulgence, your love, your faith and your hope accompany me. — Pope Benedict XVI

Adoration outside Holy Mass prolongs and intensifies what has taken place in the liturgical celebration and makes a true and profound reception of Christ possible. I . . . warmly recommend, to Pastors and to all the faithful, the practice of Eucharistic adoration — Pope Benedict XVI

God loves us; we need only to summon up the humility to allow ourselves to be loved. — Pope Benedict XVI

The happiness you have a right to enjoy has a name and a face: it is Jesus of Nazareth, hidden in the Eucharist. — Pope Benedict XVI

The Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known - it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Hope

Advent is the spiritual season of hope par excellence, and in this season the whole Church is called to be hope, for itself and for the world. — Pope Benedict XVI

The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a "new creation", capable of bearing witness in his surroundings to the Christian hope that inspires him. — Pope Benedict XVI

Dear young people, the Church depends on you! She needs your lively faith, your creative charity and the energy of your hope. Your presence renews, rejuvenates and gives new energy to the Church. — Pope Benedict XVI

Indeed, beauty is one of mankind's greatest needs; it is the root from which the branches of our peace and the fruits of our hope come forth. Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from selfishness. — Pope Benedict XVI

One who has hope lives differently. — Pope Benedict XVI

Praying actualizes and deepens our communion with God. Our prayer can and should arise above all from our heart, from our needs, our hopes, our joys, our sufferings, from our shame over sin, and from our gratitude from the good. It can and should be a wholly personal prayer. — Pope Benedict XVI

Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium. – Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. — Pope Benedict XVI

If Jesus has become your hope, communicate this to others with your joy and your spiritual, apostolic and social engagement. Let Christ dwell within you, and having placed all your faith and trust in Him, spread this hope around you. Make choices that demonstrate your faith. — Pope Benedict XVI

Hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness. — Pope Benedict XVI

The Church's mission is to spread hope "contagiously" among all peoples... It is only in this mission that the true journey of humanity is understood and attested. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Love

If you follow the will of God, you know that in spite of all the terrible things that happen to you, you will never lose a final refuge. You know that the foundation of the world is love, so that even when no human being can or will help you, you may go on, trusting in the One that loves you. — Pope Benedict XVI

Do not believe that living together before marriage guarantees the future. By burning certain stages, you risk burning love itself. Time needs to be respected gradually, just like the expressions of love. — Pope Benedict XVI

Jesus, the Word incarnate, is always the center of our announcement, the point of reference for our evangelizing mission and for its methodology, because He is the human face of God, who wishes to meet all men and women so as to bring them into communion with Him, in His love. — Pope Benedict XVI

Nature expresses a design of love and truth. — Pope Benedict XVI

Today, the need to avoid confusing marriage with other types of unions based on weak love is especially urgent. It is only the rock of total, irrevocable love between a man and a woman that can serve as the foundation on which to build a society that will become a home for all mankind. — Pope Benedict XVI

Being missionaries means loving God with all one's heart, even to the point, if necessary, of dying for him... Being missionaries means stooping down to the needs of all, like the Good Samaritan, especially those of the poorest and most destitute people. — Pope Benedict XVI

Because the truth of God is love, conversion to God is conversion to love. — Pope Benedict XVI

A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak. He knows that God is love and that God's presence is felt at the very time when the only thing we do is to love. — Pope Benedict XVI

While we too always seek other signs, other wonders, we do not realize that he is the real sign, God made flesh; he is the greatest miracle of the universe: all the love of God hidden in a human heart, in a human face. — Pope Benedict XVI

Everything in this world will pass away. In eternity only Love will remain. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Death

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. There may be legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not... with regard to abortion and euthanasia. — Pope Benedict XVI

Terrorist activity is continually recurring in various parts of the world, sowing death and destruction and plunging many of our brothers and sisters into grief and despair — Pope Benedict XVI

It is a symbol evoking a reality that touches the depths of the person ... the light of goodness that vanquishes evil, of love that overcomes hatred, of life that defeats death. — Pope Benedict XVI

The Cross is the approbation of our existence, not in words, but in an act so completely radical that it caused God to become flesh and pierced this flesh to the quick; that, to God, it was worth the death of his incarnate Son. — Pope Benedict XVI

Let us put our hands today again at (God's) disposition and pray that he takes our hands to guide us. Let his hand take ours so we won't sink, but will serve life which is stronger than death, and love which is stronger than hatred. — Pope Benedict XVI

We celebrate [Easter] because now, thanks to the risen Lord, it is definitively established that reason is stronger than unreason, truth stronger than lies, love stronger than death. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Mary

Dear young people, the happiness you are seeking, the happiness you have a right to enjoy has a name and a face: it is Jesus of Nazareth, hidden in the Eucharist. Only he gives the fullness of life to humanity! With Mary, say your own "yes" to God, for he wishes to give himself to you. — Pope Benedict XVI

Mary's greatness consists in the fact that she wants to magnify God, not herself. — Pope Benedict XVI

With the Rosary, we allow ourselves to be guided by Mary, model of faith, in meditating on the mysteries of Christ, and day after day we are helped to assimilate the Gospel, so that it shapes all our lives. — Pope Benedict XVI

It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Truth

The Gospel purifies and renews, it bears fruit, wherever the community of believers hears it and receives God’s grace in truth and charity. This is my confidence, this is my joy. — Pope Benedict XVI

The capacity to accept suffering for the sake of goodness, truth and justice is an essential criterion of humanity, because if my own well-being and safety are ultimately more important than truth and justice, then the power of the stronger prevails, then violence and untruth reigns supreme. — Pope Benedict XVI

The primary contribution that the Church offers to the development of mankind and peoples does not consist merely in material means or technical solutions. Rather, it involves the proclamation of the truth of Christ. — Pope Benedict XVI

In a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims. The truth of peace requires that all ... strive for a progressive and concerted nuclear disarmament. — Pope Benedict XVI

Ultimately, in the battle against lies and violence, truth and love have no other weapon than the witness of suffering. — Pope Benedict XVI

To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves - these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself. — Pope Benedict XVI

Sometimes we are looked upon as people who speak only of prohibitions. Nothing could be further from the truth! Authentic Christian discipleship is marked by a sense of wonder. We stand before the God we know and love as a friend, the vastness of his creation, and the beauty of our Christian faith. — Pope Benedict XVI

Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth. — Pope Benedict XVI

Tell others about the truth that sets you free. — Pope Benedict XVI

Indeed, truth draws strength from itself and not from the number of votes in its favour. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Faithful

Music, great music, distends the spirit, arouses profound emotions and almost naturally invites us to raise our minds and hearts to God in all situations of human existence, the joyful and the sad. Music can become prayer. — Pope Benedict XVI

Faith was intended precisely for the simple, but the quest for certainty and simplicity becomes dangerous when it leads to fanaticism and narrow-mindedness. When reason as such becomes suspect, then faith itself becomes falsified. — Pope Benedict XVI

Christ had a specific evangelizing goal in mind when he prayed at the Last Supper that all his disciples 'be one...'The Church's evangelizing mission, therefore, moves along the path of ecumenism, the path of unity of faith, of evangelical witness and authentic fraternity. — Pope Benedict XVI

Making the sign of the Cross - as we will do during the Blessing - means saying a visible and public "yes" to the One who died and rose for us, to God who in the humility and weakness of his love is the Almighty, stronger than all the power and intelligence of the world. — Pope Benedict XVI

Grace, lavished upon us by God and communicated through the Mystery of the Incarnate Word, is an absolutely free gift with which nature is healed, strengthened and assisted in pursuing the innate desire for happiness in the heart of every man and of every woman. — Pope Benedict XVI

Young people in particular, I appeal to you: bear witness to your faith through the digital world. — Pope Benedict XVI

You must know your faith with the same precision with which a specialist in information technology knows the operating system of a computer. — Pope Benedict XVI

Discovering the beauty and joy of faith is a path that every new generation must take on its own. — Pope Benedict XVI

What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation - if not beauty? — Pope Benedict XVI

...The baptized in their sense of mission, through prayer, the witness of life and Christian commitment in all its forms, so that all the faithful may become missionaries in the places where they live and that vocations will come forth to proclaim the Gospel to men who do not yet know it. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Fact

The Cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble labourer in the vineyard of the Lord. The fact that the Lord knows how to work and to act even with inadequate instruments comforts me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers. — Pope Benedict XVI

By itself, the question of the liturgy's essence and the standards of the reform has brought us back to the question of music and its position in the liturgy. And as a matter of fact one cannot speak about worship at all without also speaking of the music of worship. — Pope Benedict XVI

Humor is in fact an essential element in the mirth of creation. We can see how, in many matters in our lives, God wants to prod us into taking things a bit more lightly. — Pope Benedict XVI

The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers. — Pope Benedict XVI

I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools. — Pope Benedict XVI

The Faith does not mean an alienation from any culture for any people because all cultures await Christ and are not destroyed by the Lord. In fact, they reach their maturity. — Pope Benedict XVI

The fact that the church is convinced of not having the right to confer priestly ordination on women is now considered by some as irreconcilable with the European Constitution. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Moral

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. — Pope Benedict XVI

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. — Pope Benedict XVI

Global interconnectedness has led to the emergence of a new political power, that of consumers and their associations. It is good for people to realize that purchasing is always a moral - and not simply economic - act. — Pope Benedict XVI

The Church is not a political power, nor a political party, but rather a moral reality, a moral force. — Pope Benedict XVI

It is true that the Muslim world is not totally mistaken when it reproaches the West of Christian tradition of moral decadence and the manipulation of human life. ... Islam has also had moments of great splendor and decadence in the course of its history. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Lord

What does Sunday, the day of the Lord, mean for us? It is a day for rest and for family, but first of all a day for Him. — Pope Benedict XVI

I, retired in prayer, will always be with you, and together we will move ahead with the Lord in certainty. The Lord is victorious. — Pope Benedict XVI

The discernment of a vocation is above all the fruit of an intimate dialogue between the Lord and his disciples. Young people, if they know how to pray, can be trusted to know what to do with God's call. — Pope Benedict XVI

Non-African missionaries, responding generously to the Lord's call with ardent apostolic zeal, came to share the joy of revelation. Following in their footsteps, Africans are today missionaries on other continents. — Pope Benedict XVI

[Evangelization] is not something optional, but the very vocation of the People of God, a duty that corresponds to it by the command of the Lord Jesus Christ himself — Pope Benedict XVI

If we take the Lord's hand and let ourselves be guided by him, the path we take will be right and good. — Pope Benedict XVI

The ways of the Lord are not easy, but we were not created for an easy life, but for great things, for goodness. — Pope Benedict XVI

At the judgment, in response to our questions, the Lord will show us his wounds, and we will understand. In the meantime, however, he simply expects us to stand by him and to believe what these wounds tell us, even though we cannot work right through the logic of this world. — Pope Benedict XVI

Dear friends, may no adversity paralyze you. Be afraid neither of the world, nor of the future, nor of your weakness. The Lord has allowed you to live in this moment of history so that, by your faith, his name will continue to resound throughout the world. — Pope Benedict XVI

Every human being is loved by God the Father. No one need feel forgotten, for every name is written in the Lord's loving heart. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About People

Every human life is precious in God's sight and no effort should be spared in the attempt to promote throughout the world a genuine respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of individuals and peoples everywhere. — Pope Benedict XVI

I am convinced that music really is the universal language of beauty which can bring together all people of good will on earth — Pope Benedict XVI

People from the world's richest countries should be prepared to accept the burden of debt reduction for heavily indebted poor countries, and should urge their leaders to fulfill the pledges made to reduce world poverty, especially in Africa, by the year 2015. — Pope Benedict XVI

With the Synod Assembly, therefore, I heartily recommend to the Church's pastors and to the People of God the practice of Eucharistic Adoration, both individually and in community — Pope Benedict XVI

I say to you dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and He gives you verything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ and you will find true life. — Pope Benedict XVI

Our Christian conviction is that Christ is also the messiah of Israel. Certainly it is in the hands of God how and when the unification of Jews and Christians into the people of God will take place. — Pope Benedict XVI

The missionary experience is part of Christian formation and it is important for adolescents and young people to be able to live it personally. — Pope Benedict XVI

Dear young people, let me now ask you a question. What will you leave to the next generation? Are you building your lives on firm foundations, building something that will endure? — Pope Benedict XVI

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. — Pope Benedict XVI

As I passed alongside it, I prayed for a future in which the peoples of the Holy Land can live together in peace and harmony without the need for such instruments of security and separation — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Quotes About Church

In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us; eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church's supreme act of adoration. — Pope Benedict XVI

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. — Pope Benedict XVI

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs. ... The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in work, in action and in law. — Pope Benedict XVI

I believe that the most important thing...is to revive in the whole Church that positive tension, that yearning to announce Christ again to contemporary man. — Pope Benedict XVI

Thank you from the heart to all those who in various ways are near me or follow me spiritually with affection and prayers from afar. To each one of you, I ask you to continue to support me by praying to God to let me be his gentle and firm pastor of his church. — Pope Benedict XVI

[Non-Catholic Christians are] in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the [Roman Catholic] church, have the fullness of the means of salvation. — Pope Benedict XVI

The Church is missionary by nature and her principal task is evangelization, which aims to proclaim and to witness to Christ and to promote his Gospel of peace and love in every environment and culture. — Pope Benedict XVI

Selfishness and fear are at the root of (pro-abortion) legislation...We in the Church have a great struggle to defend life...life is a gift not a threat. — Pope Benedict XVI

In the month of October, the universal Church highlights her missionary vocation. Guided by the Holy Spirit she knows she is called to pursue the work of Jesus himself, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of God which is "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" — Pope Benedict XVI

We do not seek a Christ whom we have invented, for only in the real communion of the Church do we encounter the real Christ. — Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI Famous Quotes And Sayings

Receiving the Eucharist means adoring Him whom we receive. Only in this way do we become one with Him, and are given, as it were, a foretaste of the beauty of the heavenly liturgy. The act of adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself. — Pope Benedict XVI

Judas is neither a master of evil nor the figure of a demoniacal power of darkness but rather a sycophant who bows before the anonymous power of changing moods and current fashions. But it is precisely this anonymous power that crucified Jesus, for it was anonymous voices that cried 'away with him! Crucify him!' — Pope Benedict XVI

Holiness does not consist in not making mistakes or never sinning. Holiness grows with capacity for conversion, repentance, willingness to begin again, and above all with the capacity for reconciliation and forgiveness. — Pope Benedict XVI

May we be enlightened by a ray of the light that comes from Bethlehem, the light of He who is 'The Greatest' and made himself small. — Pope Benedict XVI

Advent, this powerful liturgical season that we are beginning, invites us to pause in silence to understand a presence. It is an invitation to understand that the individual events of the day are hints that God is giving us, signs of the attention he has for each one of us. — Pope Benedict XVI

Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic. — Pope Benedict XVI

Advent's intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church's year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart's memory so that it can discern the star of hope. — Pope Benedict XVI

It is necessary not only to relieve the gravest needs but to go to their roots, proposing measures that will give social, political and economic structures a more equitable and solidaristic configuration. — Pope Benedict XVI

A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. — Pope Benedict XVI

We must trust in the mighty power of God's mercy. We are all sinners, but His grace transforms us and makes us new. — Pope Benedict XVI

The story of Mary of Magdalene reminds us all of a fundamental truth...A disciple of Christ is one who, in the experience of human weakness, has had the humility to ask for his help, has been healed by him and has set out following closely after him, becoming a witness of the power of his merciful love that is stronger than sin and death. — Pope Benedict XVI

A good school provides a rounded education for the whole person. And a good Catholic school, over and above this, should help all its students to become saints. — Pope Benedict XVI

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralisation, a first assumption of responsibility... — Pope Benedict XVI

To be sure, it was not Easter Sunday but Holy Saturday, but, the more I reflect on it, the more this seems to be fitting for the nature of our human life: we are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing in the full light but walking toward it full of trust. — Pope Benedict XVI

Dear young people, we have seen that it is the Holy Spirit who brings about the wonderful communion of believers in Jesus Christ. True to his nature as giver and gift alike, he is even now working through you. Let unifying love be your measure; abiding love your challenge; self-giving love your mission! — Pope Benedict XVI

Human pride and egoism always create divisions, build walls of indifference, hate and violence. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, makes hearts capable of understanding the languages of all, as he re-establishes the bridge of authentic communication between earth and Heaven. — Pope Benedict XVI

Continue to walk in the faith and, faithful to the mandate that has been entrusted to you, go out with solicitude and joy toward all creatures and pass on to them the gifts of salvation...Let yourselves be guided by the Holy Spirit to be the leaven of new life, salt of the earth and light of the world. — Pope Benedict XVI

Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity. Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light. — Pope Benedict XVI

Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world’s mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption. — Pope Benedict XVI

I thank you, dear Brothers, for preaching the love of Christ and exhorting your people to tolerance, respect and love of their brothers and sisters and of all persons. In this way you exercise the prophetic ministry that the Lord has entrusted to the Church, and in particular to the Successors of the Apostles (cf. Pastores Gregis, 26). — Pope Benedict XVI

Food security is an authentically human requirement. Guaranteeing it for present and future generations also means safeguarding ourselves against the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources. Indeed, the process of consumption and waste seems to overlook any concern for ... biodiversity, which is so important for agriculture. — Pope Benedict XVI

Faith in the resurrection of Jesus says that there is a future for every human being; the cry for unending life which is a part of the person is indeed answered... God exists: that is the real message of Easter. Anyone who even begins to grasp what this means also knows what it means to be redeemed. — Pope Benedict XVI

The Church does not invent sins but recognizes the will of God and has to declare it. Of course, the great thing.. is that upon the Church, which has to declare the will of God in its full magnitude, in its unconditional rigor, so that man should know his true measure, is bestowed as a gift, at the same time, the task of forgiving. — Pope Benedict XVI

The blessing hands of Christ are like a roof that protects us. But at the same time, they are a gesture of opening up, tearing the world open so that heaven my enter in, may become "present" within it. — Pope Benedict XVI

Being a Christian means having love. That is unbelievably difficult and, at the same time, incredibly simple. — Pope Benedict XVI

In the face of horror ... there is no other answer than the cross of Christ: Love that descends to the abyss of evil. — Pope Benedict XVI

Before it's too late, we need to make courageous choices that will recreate a strong alliance between man and Earth. We need a decisive 'yes' to care for creation and a strong commitment to reverse those trends that risk making the situation of decay irreversible. — Pope Benedict XVI

The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security. — Pope Benedict XVI

Silence 'is so lacking in this world which is often too noisy, which is not favorable to recollection and listening to the voice of God. In this time of preparation for Christmas, let us cultivate interior recollection so as to receive and keep Jesus in our lives.' — Pope Benedict XVI

The world needs more than just itself. Amid the dreariness, people do not need a distraction that will in the end become dreary itself; they are asking for mystery, even if they do not realize this themselves. They need the sign of the wholly Other, the living Word of God, entering into this our age in unadulterated trustworthiness and dynamism. — Pope Benedict XVI

We are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing in the full light but walking toward it full of trust. — Pope Benedict XVI

For each one of you, as for the apostles, the encounter with the divine Teacher who calls you friends may be the beginning of an extraordinary venture: that of becoming apostles among your contemporaries to lead them to live their own experience of friendship with God, made Man, with God who has made himself my friend. — Pope Benedict XVI

Anyone who has discovered Christ must lead others to him. A great joy cannot be kept to oneself. It has to be passed on. — Pope Benedict XVI

God's love does not distinguish between the infant in the mother's womb or the child or the youth or the adult or the older person. In each one God sees His image and likeness. Human life is a manifestation of God and His glory. — Pope Benedict XVI

Our faith is well founded; but it is necessary that this faith become part of our lives. A great effort must therefore be made in order for all Christians to transform themselves into 'witnesses,' ready and able to shoulder the commitment of testifying - always and to everyone - to the hope that animates them. — Pope Benedict XVI

The proclamation of the Gospel remains the primary service that the Church owes to humanity, to offer the salvation of Christ to the man of our time, who is in many ways humiliated and oppressed, and to orientate in a Christian way cultural, social, and ethical transformations that are unfolding in the world. — Pope Benedict XVI

Monsters, among other brutes, are the ones without guilt feelings. Perhaps Hitler did not have any, or Himmler, or Stalin. Maybe Mafia bosses do not have any guilt feelings either, or maybe their remains are just well hidden in the cellar. Even aborted guilt feelings...All men need guilt feelings. — Pope Benedict XVI

In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture cannot be contravened under any circumstances. — Pope Benedict XVI

Both strength of mind and body are necessary, strengths which in the last few months have deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. — Pope Benedict XVI

Mission is a duty about which one must say 'Woe to me if I do not evangelize' (1 Corinthians 9:16)...redemption and mission are acts of love [because] those who proclaim the Gospel participate in the charity of Christ. — Pope Benedict XVI

One of the promising indications of a renewal in the Church's missionary consciousness in recent decades, has been the growing desire of many lay men and women [...] to cooperate generously in the 'missio ad gentes.' As Vatican Council II stressed, the work of evangelization is a fundamental duty incumbent upon the whole People of God. — Pope Benedict XVI

[The atheist believes] a world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. — Pope Benedict XVI

These days we are all pained by the disaster caused by the hurricane in the United States of America. — Pope Benedict XVI

Life Lessons by Pope Benedict XVI

1. Pope Benedict XVI taught us the importance of faith and how it can be a source of strength and guidance in our lives.
2. He also showed us the power of humility and how it can help us to be more compassionate and understanding of others.
3. Finally, he reminded us of the importance of living a life of service to others and how this can be a source of true joy and fulfillment.