“The fragility of our era is this, too: we don’t believe that there is a chance for redemption; for a hand to raise you up; for an embrace to save you, forgive you, pick you up, flood you with infinite, patient, indulgent love; to put you back on your feet. We need mercy.” 

“Let the risen Jesus enter your life—welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk; you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid. Trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you, and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.” 

“People are looking for someone to listen to them. Someone willing to grant them time, to listen to their dramas and difficulties. This is what I call the “apostolate of the ear,” and it is important. Very important. I feel compelled to say to confessors: talk, listen with patience, and above all tell people that God loves them.” 

“The corrupt man is the one who sins but does not repent, who sins and pretends to be Christian, and it is this double life that is scandalous. The corrupt man does not know humility, he does not consider himself in need of help, he leads a double life.” 

“Do you allow yourselves to be gazed upon by the Lord? But how do you do this? You look at the tabernacle and you let yourselves be looked at . . . it is simple! “It is a bit boring; I fall asleep.” Fall asleep then, sleep! He is still looking at you. But know for sure that he is looking at you!” 

“I think this is truly the most wonderful experience we can have: to belong to a people walking, journeying through history together with our Lord, who walks among us! We are not alone; we do not walk alone. We are part of the one flock of Christ that walks together.” 

“We need to let ourselves be evangelized by the poor. They have much to teach us.” 

“We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.” 

“We can get angry: it's even healthy to get angry from time to time.” 

“Sin is more than a stain. Sin is a wound; it needs to be treated, healed. The place where my encounter with the mercy of Jesus takes place is my sin.” 

“We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family.” 

“Most people nowadays would not consider love as related in any way to truth. Love is seen as an experience associated with the world of fleeting emotions, no longer with truth.

“Truth, according to the Christian faith, is God's love for us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, truth is a relationship.” 

“The Church must be a place of mercy freely given, where everyone can feel welcomed, loved, forgiven, and encouraged to live the good life of the Gospel.” 

“You could say to me, “But the Church is made up of sinners; we see them every day.” And this is true: we are a Church of sinners. And we sinners are called to let ourselves be transformed, renewed, sanctified by God.” 

“Truth is a relationship. As such, each one of us receives the truth and expresses it from within, that is to say, according to one's own circumstances, culture, and situation in life.” 

“The language of the Spirit, the language of the Gospel, is the language of communion that invites us to get the better of closedness and indifference, division and antagonism.” 

“We have only one heart, and the same wretchedness which leads us to mistreat an animal will not be long in showing itself in our relationships with other people.” 

“always know in your heart that God is by your side; he never abandons you! Let us never lose hope! Let us never allow it to die in our hearts!” 

“What need does the earth have of us?” 

“When Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything.” 

“God forgives not with a decree but with a caress. Jesus too goes beyond the law and forgives by caressing the wounds of our sins.” 

“laboratory. Ours is not a ‘lab faith,’ but a ‘journey faith,’ a historical faith. God has revealed himself as history, not as a compendium of abstract truths. I am afraid of laboratories, because in the laboratory you take the problems and then you bring them home to tame them, to paint them artificially, out of their context. You cannot bring home the frontier, but you have to live on the border and be audacious.” 

“Necesitamos una solidaridad universal nueva.” 

“ecumenical relations it is important not only to know each other better, but also to recognize what the Spirit has sown in the other as a gift for us.” 

“Let us draw from the crib the joy and deep peace that Jesus comes to bring to the world.” 

“Pius XII, more than half a century ago, said that the tragedy of our age was that it had lost its sense of sin, the awareness of sin. Today we add further to the tragedy by considering our illness, our sins, to be incurable, things that cannot be healed or forgiven.” 

“Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.” 

“To evangelize, therefore, it is necessary to open ourselves once again to the horizon of God’s Spirit, without being afraid of what he asks us or of where he leads us.” 

“Spreading the Gospel means that we are the first to proclaim and live the reconciliation, forgiveness, peace, unity, and love that the Holy Spirit gives us.” 

“Let me state this in the clearest terms possible: The problem of drug use is not solved with drugs!” he stated. “Drug addiction is an evil, and with evil, there can be no yielding or compromise.” 

“evangelizing, proclaiming Jesus, gives us joy. In contrast, egoism makes us bitter, sad, and depresses us. Evangelizing uplifts us.” 

“Only a faithful and intense relationship with God makes it possible to get out of our own closedness and proclaim the Gospel with parrhesia. Without prayer our acts are empty and our proclamation has no soul; it is not inspired by the Spirit.” 

“joy is the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It is the yeast that leavens society as a whole.” 

“When the search for pleasure becomes obsessive, it holds us in thrall and keeps us from experiencing other satisfactions. Joy, on the other hand, increases our pleasure and helps us find fulfilment in any number of things, even at those times of life when physical pleasure has ebbed.” 

“Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. She said: “We must be very proud of our vocation because it gives us the opportunity to serve Christ in the poor.” 

“Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. She said: “We must be very proud of our vocation because it gives us the opportunity to serve Christ in the poor.” 

“turned toward her and called her abuela, grandmother, as we do in Argentina. “Abuela, do you want to confess?” “Yes,” she replied. And since I was ready to leave, I said: “But if you have no sins…” Her answer was swift and immediate: “We all have sins.” “But maybe the Lord can’t forgive them,” I said. “The Lord forgives everything.” “How do you know?” “If the Lord didn’t forgive everything, our world would not exist.” 

“Mostly, people are looking for someone to listen to them. Someone willing to grant them time, to listen to their dramas and difficulties. This is what I call the “apostolate of the ear,” and it is important. Very important. I feel compelled to say to confessors: talk, listen with patience, and above all tell people that God loves them.” 

“Mercy will always be greater than any sin, no one can put a limit on the love of the all-forgiving God. Just by looking at him, just raising our eyes from ourselves and our wounds, we leave an opening for the action of his grace. Jesus performs miracles with our sins, with what we are, with our nothingness, with our wretchedness.” 

“The time has come to pay renewed attention to reality and the limits it imposes; this in turn is the condition for a more sound and fruitful development of individuals and society.” 

“You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.” 

“But sin is more than a stain. Sin is a wound; it needs to be treated, healed. This” 

“But I am telling you: I would prefer a thousand times over a bruised Church to an ill Church!” 

“the same wretchedness which leads us to mistreat an animal will not be long in showing itself in our relationships with other people. Every act of cruelty towards any creature is “contrary to human dignity”.” 

“Love cannot be reduced to an ephemeral emotion. True, it engages our affectivity, but in order to open it to the beloved and thus to blaze a trail leading away from self-centredness and towards another person, in order to build a lasting relationship; love aims at union with the beloved. Here we begin to see how love requires truth. Only to the extent that love is grounded in truth can it endure over time, can it transcend the passing moment and be sufficiently solid to sustain a shared journey. If love is not tied to truth, it falls prey to fickle emotions and cannot stand the test of time. True love, on the other hand, unifies all the elements of our person and becomes a new light pointing the way to a great and fulfilled life. Without truth, love is incapable of establishing a firm bond; it cannot liberate our isolated ego or redeem it from the fleeting moment in order to create life and bear fruit.” 

“It is one thing to be understanding of human weakness and the complexities of life, and another to accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality. Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created.” 

“someone doesn’t want to carry the cross, I don’t know what she’s still doing in the convent.” 

“someone doesn’t want to carry the cross, I don’t know what she’s still doing in the convent.” 

“The problem is not in being sinners, the problem is when we don't let ourselves be transformed in love by the encounter with Christ.”