But I am telling you: I would prefer a thousand times over a bruised Church to an ill Church!
Although the life of a person is in a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.
To change the world we must be good to those who cannot repay us.
So many of you have lost everything. I don’t know what to say to you. But the Lord does know what to say to you. Some of you have lost part of your families. All I can do is keep silence and walk with you all with my silent heart.
You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.
Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity. They are children, women and men who leave or who are forced to leave their homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having, but above all for being more.
I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.
No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.
The Church’s challenge is staying close to the people, close to the people of the United States, not being a detached Church from the people but close to them, close, close, and this is something that the Church in the United States has understood and understood well.
The measure of the greatness of a society is found in the way it treats those most in need, those who have nothing apart from their poverty!
If money and material things become the center of our lives, they seize us and make us slaves.
Too often we participate in the globalization of indifference. May we strive instead to live global solidarity.
We cannot wait any longer to deal with the structural causes of poverty, in order to heal our society from an illness that can only lead to new crises.