Quotes by Pope Benedict XVI

About Pope Benedict XVI:

Pope Benedict XVI was elected on 19 April 2005 in a papal conclave following the death of Pope John Paul II and was inaugurated on 24 April 2005.
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To have Christian hope means to know about evil and yet to go to meet the future with confidence. The core of faith rests upon accepting being loved by God, and therefore to believe is to say Yes, not only to him, but to creation, to creatures, above...

Pope Benedict XVI

One who has hope lives differently.

Pope Benedict XVI

The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right -- it is the very opposite. I...

Pope Benedict XVI

The theology of littleness is a basic category of Christianity. After all, the tenor of our faith is that God's distinctive greatness is revealed precisely in powerlessness. That in the long run, the strength of history is precisely in those who love...

Pope Benedict XVI

Each of you has a personal vocation which He has given you for your own joy and sanctity. When a person is conquered by the fire of His gaze, no sacrifice seems too great to follow Him and give Him the best of ourselves. This is what the saints have ...

Pope Benedict XVI

The mature fruit of mystagogy is an awareness that one's life is being progressively transformed by the holy mysteries being celebrated. The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a "new...

Pope Benedict XVI

The love, loyalty, and dedication of Mary and Joseph are an example for all Christian couples, who are neither the friends nor masters of their children’s lives, but the guardians of this incomparable gift from God.

Pope Benedict XVI

So Jesus in the throes of his Passion is an image of hope: God is on the side of those who suffer.

Pope Benedict XVI

In the end, even the “yes” to love is a source of suffering, because love always requires expropriations of my “I”, in which I allow myself to be pruned and wounded. Love simply cannot exist without this painful renunciation of myself, for ot...

Pope Benedict XVI

The pollution of the outward environment we are witnessing is only the mirror and the consequence of the inward environment, to which we pay too little heed. I think that this is also the defect of the ecological movements. They crusade with an under...

Pope Benedict XVI

The formula "the Church is the Body of Christ" thus states that the Eucharist, in which the Lord gives us his body, forever remains the place where the Church is generated, where the Lord himself never ceases to found her anew; in the Eucharist the C...

Pope Benedict XVI

The human person finds his perfection "in seeking and loving what is true and good.

Pope Benedict XVI

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.

Pope Benedict XVI

In the name of freedom, there has to be a correlation between rights and duties, by which every person is called to assume responsibility for his or her choices, made as a consequence of entering into relations with others.

Pope Benedict XVI

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...

Pope Benedict XVI

How much we need, in the church and in society, witnesses of the beauty of holiness, witnesses of the splendour of truth, witnesses of the joy and freedom born of a living relationship with Christ!

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

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

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

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

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

Author Bio

  • NamePope Benedict XVI
  • Description265th Pope of the Catholic Church
  • AliasesJoseph Aloisius Ratzinger; Pope Benedict XVI; Josef Ratzinger
  • BornApril 16, 1927
  • CountryGermany; Vatican City
  • ProfessionCatholic Priest; Theologian; Non-fiction Writer; Pianist
  • AwardsCommander Of The Legion Of Honour; Bavarian Order Of Merit; Bayerische Verfassungsmedaille In Gold; ; Honorary Degree; Honorary Degree