The reality of the Eucharistic sacrifice has always been at the heart of Catholic faith; called into question in the 16th century, it was solemnly reaffirmed at the Council of Trent against the backdrop of our justification in Christ.

I don't know if the term 'liberation theology,' which can be interpreted in a very positive sense, will help us much. What's important is the common rationality to which the church offers a fundamental contribution, and which must always help in the education of conscience, both for public and for private life.

Down through the centuries, the Czech Republic, the territory of the Czech Republic has been a place of cultural exchange.

God in fact does not change: he is faithful to himself.

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!

An important function of theology is to keep religion tied to reason and reason to religion. Both roles are of essential importance for humanity.

I would designate as science fiction in the best sense: they are visions and anticipations by which we seek to attain a true knowledge, but, in fact, they are only imaginations whereby we seek to draw near to the reality.

The Church is not self-made, it was created by God and is continuously formed by Him. This finds expression in the Sacraments, above all in that of Baptism: I enter into the Church not by a bureaucratic act, but with the help of this Sacrament.

I leave from where the apostle arrived.

The Church must actualize, be present in the public debate, in our struggle for a true concept of liberty and peace.

If it is true that the great missionaries of the 16th century were convinced that one who was not baptized was lost - and that explains their missionary commitment - in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, that conviction was definitely abandoned.

Loving the church also means having the courage to make difficult, trying choices, having ever before oneself the good of the church and not one's own.

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 dimension of the citizen and that of the believer.

Faith is not a product of reflection, nor is it even an attempt to penetrate the depths of my own being.

The cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord's vineyard.

If we may not remain silent about evil in the Church, then neither should we keep silent about the great shining path of goodness and purity which the Christian faith has traced out over the course of the centuries.

The Eucharistic sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ embraces in turn the mystery of our Lord's continuing passion in the members of his mystical body, the church in every age.

We let ourselves be molded and transformed by Christ and continually pass from the side of one who destroys to that of the one who saves.

We can learn from him that suffering and the gift of himself is an essential gift we need in our time.

This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness... than the desires of the moment.

God guides his church, maintains her always, and especially in difficult times. Let us never lose this vision of faith, which is the only true vision of the way of the church and the world.

For me, it is one of the 'signs of the times' that the idea of God's mercy is becoming increasingly central and dominant.

It is important to learn to understand in a historical text, a text from the past, the living Word of God, that is, to enter into prayer and thus read Sacred Scripture as a conversation with God.

It is evident that the Church is always abandoning more the old traditional structures of European life and, therefore, is changing its appearance and living new forms in itself. It's clear most of all that the de-Christianization of Europe is progressing, that the Christian element is always vanishing more from the fabric of society.