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. – Pope Benedict XVI
Celibacy is not a matter of compulsion. Someone is accepted as a priest only when he does it of his own accord. – Pope Benedict XVI
Both need each other: The agnostic cannot be content to not know, but must be in search of the great truth of faith; the Catholic cannot be content to have faith, but must be in search of God all the time, and in the dialogue with others, a Catholic can learn more about God in a deeper fashion. – Pope Benedict XVI
I no longer wield the power of the office for the government of the church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, within St. Peter’s bounds. St. Benedict, whose name I bear as pope, shall be a great example in this for me. He showed us the way to a life which, active or passive, belongs wholly to the work of God. – Pope Benedict XVI
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. – Pope Benedict XVI
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. – Pope Benedict XVI
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. – Pope Benedict XVI
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.’ – Pope Benedict XVI
While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities, and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. – 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
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. – Pope Benedict XVI
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. – Pope Benedict XVI
It is evident that the Church is always abandoning more the old traditional structures of European life and, therefore, is changing its appearance and living new forms in itself. It’s clear most of all that the de-Christianization of Europe is progressing, that the Christian element is always vanishing more from the fabric of society. – Pope Benedict XVI
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. – Pope Benedict XVI
Today we bury his remains in the earth as a seed of immortality. Our hearts are full of sadness, yet at the same time of joyful hope and profound gratitude. – Pope Benedict XVI
At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God’s creatures. – Pope Benedict XVI
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. – Pope Benedict XVI
The Christian faith can never be separated from the soil of sacred events, from the choice made by God, who wanted to speak to us, to become man, to die and rise again, in a particular place and at a particular time. – Pope Benedict XVI
This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness… than the desires of the moment. – Pope Benedict XVI
If we look to the saints, this great luminous wake with which God has passed through history, we truly see that here is a force for good that survives through millennia; here is truly light from light. – Pope Benedict XVI
We let ourselves be molded and transformed by Christ and continually pass from the side of one who destroys to that of the one who saves. – Pope Benedict XVI
The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. – 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
It’s a great responsibility before God, the judge who guides us, who draws us to truth and good, and in this sense the church must unmask evil, rendering present the goodness of God, rendering present his truth, the truly infinite for which we are thirsty. – Pope Benedict XVI
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. – Pope Benedict XVI