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ОглавлениеPOPE FRANCISIN HIS OWN WORDS
ON AGE AND AGEING
Old age, they say, is the seat of wisdom. The old ones have the wisdom that they have earned from walking through life, like old Simeon and Anna at the temple whose wisdom allowed them to recognize Jesus. Let us give with wisdom to the youth: like good wine that improves with age, let us give the youth the wisdom of our lives.
Address to cardinals, The Vatican Today, 15 March 2013
The old person is the transmitter of history, he who brings us memories, the memory of our people, of our country, of our family, culture, and religion … he has lived a long time, and even if he’s done so as a fool, he deserves serious consideration.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
The bitterness of the old person is worse than any other because it is without return.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON HIS APPOINTMENT AS POPE
I don’t want to keep the people waiting. (Before appearing on the balcony to greet people in St Peter’s Square.)
13 March 2013
Brothers and sisters, good evening. (His first words to the crowd after his introduction as Pope.)
13 March 2013
ON ARGENTINA
Is it true that Argentinians don’t want to dialogue? I wouldn’t put it that way. Rather, I think we’ve become victims of attitudes that don’t permit us to dialogue: arrogance, the inability to listen, an exasperation with language … and so many others.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
Our painful political history has all too often courted silence. The use of euphemisms has often anaesthetized us.
Homily, Easter 2008
Argentina has arrived at a moment of critical decision-making … the decision to continue as a country, to learn from its painful experiences of the past and initiate a new path, or to drown in misery, chaos, the loss of values, and decomposition as a society.
Annual Message to Educational Communities, Easter 2002
I dare to say it still: we Argentinians have a long history of mutual intolerance.
Homily, Easter 2005
We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least. The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.
Address, CELAM conference, 21 May 2007
ON ARGENTINA’S DIRTY WAR
In the Church, there were Christians from both camps: Christians who died as guerrillas, Christians who helped save people, and Christian oppressors who believed they were saving the homeland.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
We believe that the steps taken by the justice system in clarifying these events must serve to renew the efforts of all citizens toward reconciliation, and are a call to distance ourselves not only from impunity but from hatred and rancour as well. [Any Catholic who participated did so] on his own responsibility, erring and sinning gravely against God, against mankind, and against his own conscience.
Interpress Service, 11 October 2007
The horrors committed under the military governments were revealed only drip by drip, but for me they are still one of the worst blights on this country.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON ART AND ARTISTS
Artists know well that beauty isn’t solely consoling, but that it can also be disturbing. The grand masters have known how to present with beauty those realities of the human condition that are most tragic and painful.
Dissertation of the Archbishop in ADEPA, 6 April 2006
Argentina has given the world many writers and artists of quality … in every genre, from the most traditional to those that express the views of the youngest generations – all saying something about who we are and who we want to be!
Annual Message to Educational Communities, Easter 2006
The White Crucifixion by Marc Chagall. (His favourite painting.)
El Jesuita, 2010
ON ASKING CATHOLICS FOR THEIR PRAYERS
I would like to give you a blessing, but first I want to ask you for a favour. Before the bishop blesses the people, I ask that you pray to the Lord so that he blesses me.
First Blessing as Pope, 13 March 2013
ON ASPIRATIONS
No one can grow if he does not accept his smallness.
Homily, 25 May 2006
ON ASSISTED SUICIDE
In Argentina there is clandestine euthanasia. Social services pay up to a certain point; if you pass it, ‘die, you are very old’. Today, elderly people are discarded when, in reality, they are the seat of wisdom of the society. The right to life means allowing people to live and not killing, allowing them to grow, to eat, to be educated, to be healed, and to be permitted to die with dignity.
LifeSiteNews.com, 5 October 2007
A culture of discarding the elderly.
Speech, Aparecida Document, 2 October 2007
ON ATHEISTS
I don’t say that [the atheist’s] life is condemned [to Hell], because I am convinced I don’t have the right to pass judgment about the moral uprightness of that person.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
Not everyone present belongs to the Catholic faith and others do not believe. I respect the conscience of each one of you, knowing that each one of you is a child of God. May God bless you.
Vatican press conference, 16 March 2013
[I] know more agnostics than atheists; the first is more undecided, the second, more convinced.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON BAPTIZING THE CHILDREN OF SINGLE PARENTS
The child has absolutely no responsibility for the state of his parents’ marriage. And often a baptism can be a new start for the parents as well.
30 Giorni, August 2009
In our ecclesiastical region, there are priests who don’t baptize the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today’s hypocrites: those who clericalize the Church, those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish until her child can be baptized!
New York Daily News, 14 March 2013
ON BEAUTY
Few things are more moving than the human need for beauty that all hearts have.
Dissertation of the Archbishop in ADEPA, 6 April 2006
Because it is human, sometimes beauty is tragic, surprising, moving; on some occasions, it compels us to think about what we do not want or it shows us the error of our ways.
Dissertation of the Archbishop in ADEPA, 6 April 2006
ON BEING CHOSEN AS POPE
As you know, the duty of the Conclave is to give Rome a bishop. It seems that my brother cardinals went almost to the end of the world. But here we are.
First Blessing as Pope, 13 March 2013
May God forgive you. (At his first dinner with the cardinals after his election as Pope.)
ON BEING RIGHT … AND WRONG
I don’t have all the answers. Nor do I have all the questions … I confess that, in general, because of my temperament, the first response that occurs to me is the wrong one … It’s curious, but that’s the way it is with me…
El Jesuita, 2010
ON BIRTH CONTROL
[Anti-condom zealots want to] stick the whole world inside a condom.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON BRIDEZILLA WEDDINGS
In some churches – and I don’t know how to remedy this, honestly – there is a fierce competition between bridesmaids and brides. These women aren’t observing a religious act; they’re just showing off. And this weighs on my conscience; as priest, I am permitting this and I haven’t found a way to put a stop to it.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON BUENOS AIRES
Distracted city, dispersed city, egotistical city: cry. You need to be purified by your tears … Let this scatterbrained, superficial city be purified by its grief.
Homily, 30 December 2005
For many, Buenos Aires is a factory of slaves … a meat grinder which destroys their lives, breaks their will, and deprives them of freedom.
Vatican Insider, 15 December 2011
At school they taught us slavery has been abolished, but do you know what? It was a fairy tale! Because in Buenos Aires, slavery is still common in various forms. In this city workers are exploited in clandestine workshops and, if they are immigrants, they prevent them from leaving; and in this city there are children who have been living on the streets for years. In this city women are kidnapped and are submitted to the use and abuse of their bodies, destroying their dignity. There are men here who abuse and make money from human flesh. Dogs are treated better than these slaves of ours! Kick them out! Get rid of them!
Homily, 23 September 2011
This city does not know how to weep. All is fixed with anaesthetics … virtually all of them were earning their daily bread. With dignity! Father, let us not get used to the idea that to earn your daily bread you must travel like cattle. (After 52 commuters died when a train crashed into buffers at a railway station in Buenos Aires.)
Homily, 23 March 2012
How lovely it is to walk this way, slowly, feeling the presence of others, singing, looking forward, looking at the sky, praying for those who aren’t with us in Buenos Aires!
Homily, 24 May 2008
When I pray for the city of Buenos Aires, I give thanks for the fact that it was the city where I was born.
Address to the First Congress of Regional Urban Parishes, 25 August 2011
ON CARDINALS
The cardinalate is a service; it is not an award to be bragged about.
Vatican Insider, 24 February 2013
Cardinals are not NGO representatives, but servants of the Lord, inspired by the Holy Spirit, which is the one who is really able to differentiate charismas, unifying them in the Church. A cardinal must be able to differentiate between charismas and at the same time look towards unity, aware that the creator of difference and unity is the Holy Spirit itself. Cardinals who do not enter this frame of mind, in my view, are not cardinals in the way Benedict XVI would like them to be.
Vatican Insider, 24 February 2012
ON CATECHISTS
I hope that there is no room among you for apostolic mummies … please, no! Go to a museum – mummies look better there.
Address at Archdiocese Meeting, 12 March 2005
ON CATHOLIC LIFE
When one does not walk, one halts. When one does not build on stone, what happens? That happens which happens to children on the beach when they make sand castles; it all comes down, it is without substance.
Homily, First Papal Mass, 14 March 2013
To walk, to build, to confess. But the matter is not so easy, because in walking, in building, in confessing, at times there are shocks, there are movements that are not properly movements of the journey: they are movements that set us back.
Homily, First Papal Mass, 14 March 2013
ON CELIBATE PRIESTS
Yes, hypothetically, western Catholicism could revise the theme of celibacy … But for the moment, I am in favour of maintaining celibacy, with the pros and the cons it has, because we have ten centuries of more good experiences than bad ones.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON CHARACTER FLAWS
Isn’t it fickle, mediocre vanity that makes us build walls, whether they are walls of riches or power, or violence and impunity?
Homily, 25 May 2011
It astonished and perplexed me when I asked an acquaintance how he was doing and he responded, ‘Bad, but used to it.’
Homily, 22 February 2012
ON CHILD LABOUR
The promotion and strengthening of work for adults will make it possible to avoid [the phenomenon] of child labour. It’s very difficult for a child to go out and look for work if his parents have meaningful work that allows them to provide for their family’s needs.
Letter for the Youth, 1 October 2005
ON CHILDREN
What world are we leaving our children? Maybe it would be better to ask: ‘What children are we giving this world?’
Homily, 1 September 1999
We have, in our hands, the responsibility and also the possibility of making this world much better for our children.
Homily, Easter 2005
We should be cognizant of the emergency facing our children and our young people.
Letter for the Youth, 1 October 2005
So many children don’t know how to pray!
Homily, Ash Wednesday, 25 February 2004
Children are mistreated, and are not educated or fed. Many are made into prostitutes and exploited. And this happens here in Buenos Aires, in the great city of the south. Child prostitution is offered in some five-star hotels: it is included in the entertainment menu, under the heading ‘Other’.
Speech, 2 October 2007
ON CHOICES
Each day, we all face the choice to be Good Samaritans or to be indifferent travellers passing by.
Homily, 25 May 2003
ON CHOOSING THE NAME FRANCIS
The man of the poor. The man of peace. The man who loved and cared for creation – and in this moment we don’t have such a great relationship with the creator. The man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man who wanted a poor Church.
Vatican press conference, 16 March 2013
Francis is also the man of peace. That is how the name came into my heart: Francis of Assisi. For me, he is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation.
Vatican press conference, 16 March 2013
He brought to Christianity an idea of poverty against the luxury, pride, vanity of the civil and ecclesiastical powers of the time. He changed history.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
The Christian truth is attractive and persuasive because it responds to the deep needs of human existence, convincingly announcing that Christ is the only Saviour of the whole person and of all persons. This announcement is as valid today as it was at the beginning of Christianity when there was a great missionary expansion of the Gospel.
Address to cardinals, The Vatican Today, 15 March 2013
[Living] the Christian life [means] giving witness with joy, just as Jesus did.
El Jesuita, 2010
The Christian life is always a walk in the presence of God, but it is not exempt from struggles and trials.
Homily, 11 March 2006
In the life of every Christian … there will be the experience of the desert, of interior purification, of the dark night.
Homily, 11 March 2006
ON CHRISTMAS
What is the spirit of Christmas? Over the years the world of culture has tried to express it in a thousand ways and has managed to take us closer to the meaning of the Christmas spirit. How many Christmas stories bring us closer to this?
La Nacion, 23 December 2011
ON THE CHURCH
We have to avoid the spiritual sickness of a self-referential Church. It’s true that by straying from its path, as can happen to any man or woman, accidents can happen. But if the Church stays enclosed within itself, self-referential, it will grow old. And between a Church that accidentally strays off its path and one that is sick because of self-reference, I have no doubt: I prefer the former.
El Jesuita, 2010
If, throughout history, the Church has changed so much, I do not see why we should not adapt it to the culture of the [our] time.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
The Church is Mother and talks to the people as a mother talks to her child, with that confidence that the child already knows that everything he is being taught is for his good, because he knows he is loved.
Homily, 19 January 2005
The Church was, is, and will continue to be persecuted.
Homily, 23 April 2007
How I would love a Church that is poor and for the poor.
Vatican press conference, 16 March 2013
I must not be scandalized by the fact that the Church is my mother: I must look at its sins and shortcomings as I would look at my mother’s sins and shortcomings. And when I think of her, I remember the good and beautiful things she has achieved, more than her weaknesses and defects. A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the Church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.
America Magazine, 13 March 2013
ON THE CHURCH IN BUENOS AIRES
Instead of just being a Church that welcomes and receives, we try to be a Church that comes out of itself and goes to the men and women who do not participate in parish life, do not know much about it and are indifferent towards it. We organize missions in public squares where many people usually gather: we pray, we celebrate Mass, and we offer baptism which we administer after a brief preparation.
Vatican Insider, 24 February 2013
ON CHURCH POLITICS
The Pope … talked about James and John and the tensions between the first followers of Jesus on who should be first. This shows us that certain attitudes and arguments have existed in the Church since the beginning.
Vatican Insider, 24 February 2012
There are sectors within the religions that are so prescriptive that they forget the human side.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
There have been corrupt periods. There were very difficult periods, but the religion revived itself.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON THE CHURCH’S EMPHASIS ON SUFFERING
It is true that at one time, [the Church] really emphasized the matter of suffering. The exaltation of suffering in the Church depends a great deal on the era and the culture [in question].
El Jesuita, 2010
ON CITIES
Every big city has many riches, many possibilities, but also many dangers.
Homily, 12 March 2005
The city is also a mother.
Homily, 30 December 2005
ON CITIZENSHIP
Political society will only endure if the satisfaction of common human needs is our vocation. This is the role of the citizen.
Homily, 25 May 1999
We are historical people. We live in time and space. Every generation needs the ones before it and owes those who follow. And this, in great measure, is what it means to be a nation: to understand ourselves as continuing the work of other men and women who have already done their part.
Annual Message to Educational Communities, Easter 2002
We don’t have to expect everything from those who govern us; that would be juvenile.
Homily, 25 May 2003
People are historical subjects, which is to say citizens and members of the pueblo [nation]. The state and society should generate the social conditions that promote and act as guardian of their rights and allow them to be builders of their own destiny.
Speech, Archdiocesan Social Pastoral Conference, 16 October 2010
ON CIVILIZATION
It is possible to build a new civilization centred on love and life.
Homily, 25 September 2004
ON THE CONCLAVE
The period of the Conclave was full of meaning, not only for the College of Cardinals, but also for all the faithful. In these days we felt, almost tangibly, the affection and solidarity of the universal Church, as well as the attention of many people who, although they do not share our faith, look to the Church and the Holy See with respect and admiration.
Address to cardinals, The Vatican Today, 15 March 2013
ON CONVERSATION
Would it be possible for us to be more attentive to what we say to others and what we don’t say?
Annual Message to Educational Communities, Easter 2002
In order to have dialogue, you have to know how to lower your defences, open the doors of your home and offer human warmth.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
True growth in human consciousness cannot be founded on anything other than the practice of dialogue and love.
Annual Message to Educational Communities, Easter 2002
ON CREATIVITY
The challenge of creative beings is to be suspicious of every discourse, thought, affirmation, or proposal that presents itself as ‘the only possible path’. There are always others. There is always another possibility.
Annual Message to Educational Communities, 9 April 2003
If to build something we always undo and step on what others have done before us, how can we create something solid?
Annual Message to Educational Communities, 9 April 2003
ON CRITICIZING ARGENTINA’S LEADERS
Rather than preventing [it], it seems they have opted for making inequalities even greater.
Guardian, 13 March 2013
ON DEATH
Death is on my mind every day.
El Jesuita, 2010
ON THE DEATH OF ARGENTINIAN PRESIDENT NÉSTOR KIRCHNER
And we are here today to pray for a man named Néstor, who was received by the hands of God and who, in his moment, was anointed by his people [to lead].
Homily, 27 October 2010
ON THE DEATH PENALTY
Before, it was one of those punishments that Christianity accepted. But today moral conscience has become more refined and the catechism says it would be better if [capital punishment] didn’t exist.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON DEMOCRACY
Of course, participating in political life is a way of honouring democracy.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON THE DEVIL
Theologically speaking, the Devil is a being who chose not to accept God’s plan.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
Whoever does not pray to Jesus Christ, prays to the Devil.
First Homily as Pope, 15 March 2013
In my own experience, I feel [the presence of] the Devil every time I’m tempted to do something that isn’t what God asked of me.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON DIGNITY
There is not a single violation of the dignity of a woman or man that can be justified in the name of any other thing or idea. Not a single one.
Annual Message to Educational Communities, 18 April 2007
When a person or a people sells its dignity or bargains it … everything else loses consistency and ceases to have worth.
Homily, 7 August 2007
ON DOUBT
The greatest leaders in God’s tribe have been those men who have left room for doubt.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON DRUGS
Alcohol and drugs are an easy shortcut.
Guardian, 16 March 2013
ON EDUCATION
Education is the genuine expression of social love.
Annual Message to Educational Communities, 27 April 2006
ON ELITISM
The impatience of the illustrious elites doesn’t understand the laborious, daily march of the people, nor the message of the wise man.
Homily, 25 May 2004
ON EVANGELISM
We have to go out and talk to people in the city who we’ve seen on their balconies. We have to come out of our shell and tell them that Jesus lives … to say it with joy … even though it seems a little crazy sometimes.
Homily, 11 March 2000
ON EXCLUSIVITY
Sometimes, I ask myself if we, the Church, are complicit with a culture of exclusion, one in which there is no longer space for the old person, for the child, where there is no time to stop on the side of the road like the Good Samaritan.
Homily, 12 March 2005
ON FAITH
People ask why we spend our time touching a statue when we could be out looking for work. We do it because faith will see us through. We do it because faith endures. We do it because faith is all we have at a time like this.
