Through Mary, we come to her Son more easily.

Gandhi was much more Christian than many people who say they are Christians.

Faith intervenes not to abolish reason's autonomy nor to reduce its scope for action, but solely to bring the human being to understand that in these events it is the God of Israel who acts.

All human activity takes place within a culture and interacts with culture.

One cannot use with impunity the different categories of beings-animals, plants, the natural elements-simply as one wishes, according to economic needs. One must take into account the nature of each being and its mutual connection in an ordered system, which is the cosmos.

We need a new apologetic, geared to the needs of today, which keeps in mind that our task is not to win arguments but to win souls... Such an apologetic will need to breathe a spirit of humanity, that humility and compassion which understand the anxieties and questions of people.

To reach peace, teach peace.

All human life-from the moment of conception and through all subsequent stages-is sacred, because human life is created in the image and likeness of God. Nothing surpasses the greatness or dignity of a human person...If a person's right to life is violated at the moment in which he is first conceived in his mother's womb, an indirect blow is struck also at the whole moral order.

The Rosary mystically transports us to Mary's side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth. This enables her to train us and to mold us with the same care, until Christ is ''fully formed'' in us... Why should we not once more have recourse to the Rosary, with the same faith as those who have gone before us?

From the Eucharist comes strength to live the Christian life and zeal to share that life with others.

Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom - it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another.

The body in its masculinity and femininity has been called "from the beginning" to become the manifestation of the spirit. The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine.

Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

Our future on this planet, exposed as it is to nuclear annihilation, depends on one single factor: humanity must make a moral about-face.

Christ is the sacrament of the invisible God - a sacrament that indicates presence. God is with us.

Truth must be the foundation stone, the cement to solidify the entire social edifice.

We face a fundamental question which can be described as both ethical and ecological. How can accelerated development be prevented from turning against man? How can one prevent disasters that destroy the environment and threaten all forms of life, and how can the negative consequences that have already occurred be remedied?

Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colors, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look and listen.

The primordial model of the family is to be sought in God himself, in the Trinitarian mystery of his life. The divine "We" is the eternal pattern of the human "we", especially of that "we" formed by the man and the woman created in the divine image and likeness... Man is created "from the very beginning" as male and female: the life of all humanity - whether of small communities or of society as a whole - is marked by this primordial duality.

When we go before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament we represent the one in the world who is in most need of God's Mercy." We "Stand in behalf of the one in the world who does not know Christ and who is farthest away from God and we bring down upon their soul the Precious Blood of The Lamb.

Creating the human race in His own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation... of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.

This is why moral uneasiness is destined to become even more acute. It is obvious that a fundamental defect, or rather a series of defects, indeed a defective machinery is at the root of contemporary economics and materialistic civilization, which does not allow the human family to break free from such radically unjust situations.

A man, even if seriously sick or prevented in the exercise of its higher functions, is and will be always a man ... [he] will never become a 'vegetable' or an 'animal,'" the Pope said. "The intrinsic value and personal dignity of every human being does not change depending on their circumstances.