Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

166 Sourced Quotes

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
There is an urgent need for the emergence of a new generation of apostles anchored firmly in the word of Christ, capable of responding to the challenges of our times and prepared to spread the Gospel far and wide.

Pope Benedict XVI
Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division, of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses, and the pain of false promises.

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
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
Can we remain indifferent before the problems associated with such realities as climate change?

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
Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. That He can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to be with Him and can stand there in the fullness of life. Purgatory strips off from one person what is unbearable and from another the inability to bear certain things, so that in each of them a pure heart is revealed, and we can see that we all belong together in one enormous symphony of being.

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

Pope Benedict XVI
Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken, decisions aimed at strengthening that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we came and towards whom we are journeying.

Pope Benedict XVI
Experience shows that disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence, and vice versa. It becomes more and more evident that there is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace among men.

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
Friends, do not be afraid of silence or stillness. Listen to God. Adore Him in the Eucharist.

Pope Benedict XVI
To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity.

Pope Benedict XVI
Guilt must not be allowed to fester in the silence of the soul, poisoning it from within. It needs to be confessed. Through confession we bring it into the light, we place it within Christ's purifying love. In confession, the Lord washes our soiled feet over and over again and prepares us for table fellowship with him.

Pope Benedict XVI
The human being of all times prays because he cannot fail to wonder about the meaning of his life, which remains obscure and discomforting of it is not put in relations to the mystery of God and if his plan for the world.

Pope Benedict XVI