Pope Francis

Sometimes I have to take a tranquilizer to sleep. I keep calm. If I have a problem, I write it down on a piece of paper and give it to St. Joseph. Now he sleeps on it! And I sleep too. It’s a good way to rest.

Many speak of the Pope and the Church, but without understanding what the Pope and the Church are. They speak as if they were journalists, but they are not. They are ideologues.

I believe that when there is a lack of work, a family is suffering, a child is suffering, and when the elderly have no dignity, that is when society is suffering.

We are living in a culture of waste. This culture of waste has made us insensitive even to the waste of food, which is even more despicable when many men and women, children and elderly, still suffer and die from hunger and malnutrition.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalize people for this. They must be integrated into society.

Slander is worse than murder. Slander kills the reputation of a person. It is worse than murder because even if you kill, you can repent and go to heaven. But slander kills the soul of the person.

The globalized technological paradigm has inverted the order of priorities: the useful is now the criterion of truth.

The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.

A world without women would be a sterile world.

The death penalty is an inhumane measure that humiliates human dignity. There is no justification for it, and it is unacceptable.

What are we doing with our children? We are making them into little monsters.

It is not a good thing when priests become rigid. Rigidity is a sign of something bad. It is a sign of a lack of freedom, and that is a sign of spiritual worldliness.

The powerful of the earth, when they do not want to see problems, they cover them up. They hide them.

The true power is service. The Pope must be a servant of servants.

Sometimes, when I see a very young priest, who is very rigid, I think: ‘Something is not right with this one.’

We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose.

A good Catholic is interested in politics.

The Lord asks us to be shepherds, not to be sheep dogs, but shepherds.

The Church is not a supermarket. The Church is a Mother.

The poor cannot wait.